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This is your go-to podcast for all things marketing, branding, and customer experience. We’re bringing you honest and fun conversations with bite-sized insights. Hosted by BrightSign’s CMO Brian Rowley and Head of Integrated Marketing Laura Smith, you’ll hear from industry pros, creatives, and innovators about what’s actually working in today’s evolving, digital-first world. No fluff — just real insights on how brands are connecting with audiences and driving growth. Tune in for fresh ideas, big thinking, and all the tips you need to take your marketing game to the next level.
That's where AI is right now. It's a Swiss army knife. It has 99 blades, and you know how to use one of them. Pros and cons.
Brian Rowley:Welcome to Prose + Comms: Engagement, Unplugged. I'm Brian Rowley.
Laura Smith:And I'm Laura Smith.
Brian Rowley:If you've actually worked on a lean marketing team, you've probably felt the pressure to do pretty much everything with limited time, people, and budgets. And today we're actually gonna dig into how actually smaller teams can still be strategic and how to build momentum with actually out burning out or wasting budget.
Laura Smith:But before we dive in and introduce our guests for today, we have a new game to play, and it's called Keep, Kill, Fix. Okay.
Brian Rowley:I'm always nervous with new games, Laura. I'm always nervous with
Norman Guadagno:new games.
Laura Smith:And new music by Joey.
Brian Rowley:And new music by Joey. I love the music, but the games always scare me just a bit.
Laura Smith:Okay. So let's dive in. So we talk a lot in this podcast about marketing with intention
Brian Rowley:Yeah.
Laura Smith:And not just doing more for more sake. So this is a quick way for us to pressure test common marketing tactics. So, we're gonna name a few common marketing activities, and for each one, we'll decide if it's we'll keep it. So basically, it's working and worth continuing. We'll kill it.
Laura Smith:It's not adding value and should stop. Or fix. There's something there, but it's been done wrong. So especially through the lens of teams with limited time and budget, in the spirit of today's episode, we're gonna dive into keep, kill, fix. Ready, Brian?
Brian Rowley:I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay. Weekly blog posts. I say keep them.
Brian Rowley:I actually think that, I think as thought leadership one, but I mean, I would say keep, but I also feel like, again, we have this conversation all the time, right? It has to be relevant. Those types of things in order to like if you're posting just for the sake of posting weekly blogs and, you know, your audience isn't either responding to it or, you know, you're searching for things that really aren't relevant, I would say not necessarily. But I think if you do a good job of creating the content associated with it, absolutely keep it. What about you?
Laura Smith:I would just say fix just because I don't think it has to be weekly. I think it's like when the content's relevant, when it serves a purpose or an audience. So I think blog content is definitely keep. But the weekly blog posts, I would say just fix it because maybe it's not so intentionally done on that timely schedule.
Brian Rowley:Makes sense. Okay. Posting on every social platform.
Laura Smith:I'm gonna say kill because I don't think to be socially present or relevant, you need to be on every platform. It doesn't make sense for your brand personally or for, you know, a professional brand.
Brian Rowley:And I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I would say that I think being aware of who the audience is on each of the platforms and targeting the content or your post to the appropriate audience is probably the thing that is what people should be striving for just versus doing a blanket post across all social platforms that you're on, not understanding the audience that actually shows up in those places.
Laura Smith:Right. Okay. AI generated content.
Brian Rowley:Okay. I would say keep, but fix. And so, and here's the reason why I think anybody that's out there, that's actually just going into an AI tool and generating content and then literally flipping that over and posting it, I think is making a huge mistake. I think that you still have to incorporate that humanistic approach and some of the experience that we all have and modify that content to be relevant to your business and have somewhat of a human element to it. So I think it's fixed, but I definitely think we need to keep it because we talk about this all the time.
Brian Rowley:Your thoughts?
Laura Smith:I'm definitely a keep. I agree with you. I almost feel like these kind of, prompts or ideas need need definitions because AI generated content in general to me is of course we're gonna keep that. And you're reading and interpreting it in a way as like, is it only that? So, no, definitely not only it.
Laura Smith:Only, you know, AI generated content, but AI generated content. Realistically, yes, we need
Laura Smith:to keep it.
Brian Rowley:Great. Is it you or me?
Laura Smith:You. Alright. Jesus. Game's really riveting as you go
Brian Rowley:down. You know me. White papers and ebooks. Okay.
Laura Smith:I'm gonna say people that know me or have worked with me in marketing for many years, I'm I'm personally not a fan of them in the sense of like, would I read one, would I download them? As from a professional standpoint, it's very, very rare or unlikely I would. But as a marketer and as like the research shows, people want that content. So it's a keep. Again, making sure it's relevant, making sure, you know, it makes sense to your audience and you're targeting the right audience with that message.
Laura Smith:But, yeah, it's a keeper.
Brian Rowley:I I don't disagree, but I would ask you this. How much longer do you think it's white papers and ebooks are gonna be around? Like, do you see that in the next
Laura Smith:few
Brian Rowley:I
Laura Smith:thought they were dead. I know, me too.
Brian Rowley:That's why I'm like, the fact that we're even having this conversation, we're saying still keep them. I look at it and I'm like, how much longer? Because honestly, in general for me, they just don't work. I know there's audiences out there and I think there's certain job titles that rely very heavily on them. But in general, I don't know.
Brian Rowley:Just, every time I see something where someone wants to do a white paper and ebook that comes across my desk, I'm always like, really? Is that what we're gonna do?
Laura Smith:Agreed. Okay. Events and trade shows, your favorite topic.
Brian Rowley:I know everyone thinks I hate trade shows. I really don't hate them, but I do think they need to be fixed. And I say that because, we just got back from ISE and you look at the amount that people spend on trade show and trade show properties and you look at it and you see people coming back year over year over year, and I won't name companies, but companies that were surrounding us had the exact same booth they had last year and the year before that. And it just seems to me when you look at how much of your budget goes into creating that type of a property, and then offering nothing new to pull me in as a consumer or a customer, I just feel like it's a huge miss. And I think in trade shows in general, I think a lot of companies get lazy and pulling off a good trade show takes a lot of time.
Brian Rowley:It takes a lot of thought thinking about who the audience is, what's the message that you're trying to target, what's important, who are the keynotes that are showing up there? Does your brand message align with the keynotes? All of that research versus just showing up, putting up a property and calling it a day. I just think there's a lot of work that needs to be done to fix them. And I know you don't love them either.
Brian Rowley:So don't blame this all on me. Like this is all me.
Laura Smith:I definitely don't
Brian Rowley:love them.
Laura Smith:You like them more than I do.
Brian Rowley:I understand there's a need for them.
Laura Smith:Yes. Right. There's value that comes from it. Again, coming back from ISE and just experiencing being able to talk to customers or prospects or partners, it's just like you can't it really is a very, you know, like a fulfilling, and I feel like you kind of leave there so energized
Brian Rowley:Great.
Laura Smith:For what's to come for the year and the opportunities lie ahead and seeing all the technology and advancements. I mean, it's just it's a it is. It's a must, but there needs to be a fix. I don't know what that fix is, but hopefully we'll get there soon.
Brian Rowley:I mean, we've talked about this a lot. You know, we've talked about, you know, having those moments where, you know, it's I I think Alicia Henley had mentioned to it when we talked to her about this, you know, those Instagramable moments that people can pull out and actually something that's important that resonates. So I agree a 100%. Annual marketing plans.
Laura Smith:Fix. Because nothing you can't set anything at the beginning of the year and expect to play that out strategically or through execution as you saw thought of it in December the year before. So too much has changed. So much evolves the business itself, marketing in general, the industry. So it's definitely a fix because whether that, you know, you look at it quarterly or you look at it every six months or some teams depending on how, you know, efficient or nimble they can be.
Laura Smith:Maybe it's monthly. So you need a marketing plan. Obviously, you need to have a strategy set for the year or just like going into the year, but then you need to be open to adjusting and making sure that what you're doing makes sense for the business and what, the customers that you're trying to reach.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, I don't think they go away. I just think that the, for me, the annual piece to it is the part that I struggle with a bit. Because I think you have to have checks and balances and you have to make sure things are working. And we all know that the business throws us a 100 curve balls in the course of a year. So, and everything takes that priority.
Brian Rowley:But the reality is, and we're gonna talk about this today, when you have smaller teams, pivoting that quickly on major topics all the time is really challenging. But at this so if you don't have somewhat of a plan in place of what you're targeting and what you're trying to get to, you can get lost very, very quickly. And so I think I'm good with marketing plans, but I think the annual piece to it is the part that really causes me to say, yeah, I agree that we need to fix. So let's jump in. Let's let's bring in someone who actually spends his time helping teams figure out exactly these kinds of trade offs.
Brian Rowley:Our guest today helps marketing organizations grow, transform, and actually drive revenue often with far fewer resources than most of us would probably like. He's held senior leadership roles across agency and brands, and now works closely with companies as a fractional CMO. So please welcome Norman Guadagno.
Norman Guadagno:Such an intro, I feel humbled by that. I will do my best to live up to It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. Well, thank you for being here. We're excited to have you.
Laura Smith:Yes, we are. We're excited to dive in. A lot of, I think, what we'll talk about today is very relevant to our day to day and being in somewhat of that startup mentality and environment, smaller team working very efficiently. So we're we're we're excited to learn from you, Norman. Let's dive in.
Laura Smith:So if a small team can only focus on a few things to truly build momentum, where should they spend their time and money?
Norman Guadagno:Having listened to the kill, keep, or fix, I know your opinions on a few of these things right off the bat. I think it's a great question, right? So where should you spend your time? And I have a few ways that I think about that. First of all, there's the and as you said, there's some things that the business just expects.
Norman Guadagno:Like people want to see the web website updated. You have new products or services. You have to bring them on the website. So you take a bunch of stuff that is just expected. You got to send out emails if you have an email cadence.
Norman Guadagno:You have to do a bunch of things. You have to create certain types of content to feed SEO or to feed LLMs. So you take that off the table because that's sort of the table stakes. Right? You got to do it.
Norman Guadagno:Then it becomes, how can marketing actually make a significant impact on the business? And you start looking at it with that lens very quickly of what can marketing do that's going to make the business stand out in a way that's going to drive engagement, given the finite resources you have. And that finite resources varies upon the business, right? Some companies have teams of 20 people, and they're like, we're 10 people understaffed. Some people have teams of 10 people, and like, we're just about right.
Norman Guadagno:It varies. But what I find is when you start looking at what actually is going to make the business stand out, for example, trade shows. A lot of companies put trade shows in the bucket of must do. I actually think it's totally acceptable to take it into the why should we do, and will we get the value from it? As a quick thing that you have to think about right up front, Did we get value from it last year other than just showing up?
Norman Guadagno:If you start looking at through that lens very quickly, you enter the realm of, oh, wait. Everything's subject to asking the question. Is it a we've always done it, therefore we must do it? Or it's a we actually can stand out? I don't want to go to a trade show and just be another guy and gal standing there saying, look at me, look at me.
Norman Guadagno:I wanna go to a trade show and actually know that I'm gonna shake hands, make contact, stand out, and be remembered. So I think when you think about it through the lens of nothing outside of what the business requires is actually sort of sacrosanct. Everything should be looked at through that lens. Will marketing make an impact?
Brian Rowley:I agree. And I think the other thing is it doesn't always have to be from where I sit and what I looked at. Don't I think it's an always an either or either, it's also prioritizing how much of your budget are you gonna spend in each of these areas. So when you look at trade shows as an example, I don't think they should go away by any stretch, but if they're 60% of your budget and to your point, you can't prove ROI back to them, then I think it's a time for the company as a whole. And it's not just marketing, it's marketing, it's sales, it's everyone who's involved in it to say, is this the best use of our dollars and what are you getting in return for that?
Brian Rowley:But I think, you know, that also takes us down another thing. And this would be another question I would have for you is, do you actually help teams separate, what feels important because in a lot of cases, right? You know, people say, oh, you know, trade shows they're super, super important from what actually drives impact in revenue. How do you help people prioritize that and make those distinctions?
Norman Guadagno:It's a hard thing to do, Brian. Yeah. I mean, let's be clear, right? You just hit on the crux of it, because how many times do you think that you have a trade show plan until the CEO says, we need a bigger booth. I've done that.
Norman Guadagno:I've been in companies where I said, well, maybe we don't need a booth at all until the new CEO showed up and said, why don't we have a booth? All the other cool companies have booths. Why don't we? Well, we have this whole off-site strategy, blah blah blah. But back to your question, it is tricky.
Norman Guadagno:And it's one of the reasons why I actually like trying to go back to revenue impact. What does marketing do that ultimately will drive revenue? If you've attended these trade shows for years and I've done this exercise, by the way, with a team long list of trade shows every year. These are the ones we do. These are the partner events.
Norman Guadagno:These are the industry events. Here's the leads we've gotten, how many leads we got, here's how much we spend. Awesome. But there was one thing missing from that spreadsheet, and it was not the fault of the person who showed me the spreadsheet. You know what was missing from that spreadsheet?
Norman Guadagno:The revenue those leads created. And when we reanalyzed it, it turns out that some shows may have gotten far fewer leads, but they were much higher quality. Some shows got lots of junk leads. So you change your investment strategy based on connecting it to revenue rather than just saying, oh, it's got to get a lot of leads. Leads a are distraction, right?
Norman Guadagno:They're the big red herring of marketing. Leads, leads, leads, leads. If leads don't turn into revenue, often they're just a lot of activity for no return. And so I see this across companies from tiny, where their marketing team is five people, to where the marketing team is 100 people. This focus on the wrong metrics versus this ability to really get in there and start to say, wait.
Norman Guadagno:Look at this little show we did that had six leads, four of which became quality revenue. We gotta do more of those and less of these big ones. So I think that you have to be very careful not to just get distracted by we have always done it, or we should do it, and this is how we do it, but what were the results that actually matter to the business?
Laura Smith:Which is such an interesting, timely conversation. I know we're kind of in this trade show. This is just a little bit of bubble here.
Brian Rowley:Frenzy that we're in.
Laura Smith:Yeah. Right. But it's like we won't even call those lead. We're changing the game and not calling them leads. They're contacts.
Laura Smith:They haven't really they've kinda passed through the booth, and they're just being scanned. You have no idea interest level. So, like, we're trying to say, take a step back even further. They're a contact. We need them to become a lead.
Laura Smith:And then, obviously, in turn, like, you know, what what percentage can become revenue? So that's how we're having to look at it differently and then which ones already were in our database and who is new to our database as we think about growing kind of our customer base. So I think even that, Norman, it's like, how do we truly set expectations? Because when we come back from a show and people are oh, we have all these leads. And, again, we got a lot of scans, like we would call them, from the show last week, but that doesn't mean that's gonna be revenue.
Laura Smith:It means, you know, it's quality over quantity. So I think getting everyone to think about the shift in the mindset of, like, say, that marketing tactic alone is super important because people wanna see revenue drawn from marketing activities, but there's sometimes it's a long lead, sometimes it just take a long sales cycle. Like, you just you can't really always prove that out so quickly because it's
Norman Guadagno:Right. Right. And and, Laura, you you just hit on something key. Let's think about this. How many marketing teams are driven not just by leads or even contacts, but frankly by large quantities?
Norman Guadagno:Marketing is supposed to be a scale business, and so it's all about up and to the right. And how often do you see marketing show a bunch of charts where things are up and to the right? Hey, hey, we're doing well. But none of those charts are revenue charts. And if you step back for a second, you say, well, maybe it's not really a quantity game.
Norman Guadagno:Of course, we're the broad reach team. We're good at that. But maybe it's about that nice balance between quantity and quality resulting in what matters to the business. And I like the let's talk about context. It's just a bunch of people who are interested.
Norman Guadagno:Okay, maybe they'll become nothing. I remember an example with a company where they published a report every year, and it was a big deal. A lot of work went into it. A lot of effort was like, it's coming. Here's the big report.
Norman Guadagno:We put the big report up there, and all of a sudden, it became how many downloads did we get? 100, 500, 1,000, a lot of downloads. And that was sort of the end of the story until we reanalyzed it and we said, well, what kind of downloads are we looking for? Well, prospects, of course. Okay.
Norman Guadagno:Great. Go back to that list of downloads, and let's look at them. And it didn't take very long to see that 50% or more of the downloads, the email address ended in dot e d u. It was a bunch of students downloading information for papers they were writing, for research they were doing. Pull out all the .edu's, and you have a much smaller number, and now you actually have the population you care about.
Norman Guadagno:So marketers have to be very thoughtful. They don't get caught up in the, we just need those big numbers.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, you actually made a point though and said that, you know, it's just a bunch of people that are actually interested. I would argue that in some cases, I don't even know that we could say that that's true. Because I would say, well, I mean, quite honestly, I mean, there's companies that are out there, especially at shows and events that are paid to scan badges. That doesn't necessarily mean someone's interested. It just means that someone, you know, was alive and walked past your booth.
Brian Rowley:And I think, you know, to Laura's point, like, I'm curious how many people have, you know, leave some of these shows and they're still using the amount of scans or contacts that they got to judge whether or not it was successful or not. Because I think to be honest with you, people are asked that question, many may not admit to it, but I'm sure there's quite a few that actually are, that's the baseline of what they use. Was it more successful than last year? Because we have more names than we had last year. Who cares how many names?
Brian Rowley:Quite honestly, it's what were the conversations that were happening? Did the message that you were providing resonate? Like what are the ways that you measure that to show the effectiveness of the dollars spent versus just someone who walked by your booth?
Norman Guadagno:Oh, such a great point. And you're right that so many teams do that because frankly, it's easy. It's a number, right? And and it's harder. And here's even another double click on that.
Norman Guadagno:Oftentimes, is doing the, hey, we're gonna scan badges. We're going to make sure we get the numbers. Sales is the ones who are actually having conversations on the show floor, and they're being tracked in two separate places. It just creates complexity upon complexity. And I know we're talking a lot about trade shows.
Norman Guadagno:There's a lot of other things, such as AI generated content, that you can do to be effective nowadays. But it all comes back to, how do you get every marketer in the team, whether you have a team of five or a team of 50, to be thinking about the right aligned outcomes that they're trying to drive. Even in small companies, even in small teams, like driving towards those outcomes, not simply reporting on a bunch of data. As marketers become obsessed with data, they say, well, we're obsessed with data, so therefore, we report more data because that will make us look good. That's not actually a good look.
Laura Smith:But how do you, like, just on this, because obviously revenue is really what everyone wants to see, but there are marketing activities that aren't going to they're not gonna be a one to one to drive revenue. So, you know, I think about PR, for instance. You know, I'm thinking about, like, our presence, through earned media and communications, as well as even social. Social can maybe link directly to, but I guess you can call it some of, the upper funnel brand work to the lower funnel activity. So how are you when you're stepping into these teams and having to get them to align or the rest of the c suite to understand?
Laura Smith:How are you educating and or balancing the funnel, if you will? So it's because in that, it's not always gonna be revenue. Yep. You know, in a small company, that's what they're be looking for, but how do you manage that?
Norman Guadagno:It's an important insight. Right? Of course, there are things like, as you mentioned, PR, earned media, social. It's not directly related to revenue, But it it is the case that you start to think about marketing as a system, and particularly when you're talking to people outside of marketing. I learned this a few years ago, it was one of the great insights that I got from somebody I was working with.
Norman Guadagno:We stopped talking about that upper funnel awareness for the most part, especially outside of the marketing team, and we started talking about future buyers. And that is people who maybe someday they'll be a buyer. How important is it that we're educating them? And then we started talking about that middle of the funnel, buyers who are in market. But maybe they're not ready to buy, but they're browsing around.
Norman Guadagno:They know that they need this solution at some point. And then, of course, you have the active buyers, bottom of the funnel. And if you recast it away from that, we're creating brand awareness here, and we can't tell you that it matters for anything, and turn it into, we're building future buyers. And in order for us to be able in a year to have n number of customers to generate x amount of revenue based on how the business is run, we need to make sure that we have created a pool of n number of future buyers. We have to touch 5,000 people, 10,000 people, 100,000 people, a million people to get the 500 people that ultimately become the 50 people that become the five people that are gonna buy.
Norman Guadagno:And so if you rethink the funnel through that lens, you start having different discussions. It's not that you're saying, oh, PR generates revenue. What you're saying is earned media social. We are building relationships with our future buyers, and we're targeted. Gotta know your ICP.
Norman Guadagno:We're very targeted, and we believe someday Laura and Brian are gonna need this product. And when they do, I have created awareness for them.
Brian Rowley:I think this is an age old problem though, that's especially happened through marketing, right? Because I think whether it's grooming future customers, or even, you know, how many companies have we all been a part of where it's a matter of new customers versus retaining existing. And, know, I mean, it goes back and forth, right? The focus is on new customers, the focus is on retaining. I mean, it's really no different, right?
Brian Rowley:I mean, at the end of the day, I think it's about a well balanced marketing plan that does allow you to do all of those things. Because at the end of the day, when you look at it, especially in today's world that we're in, it's all what type of revenue are you generating in those twelve months and does it exceed what you built last year? And so being able to say, oh, I groomed someone for a two year down the road cycle. Quite honestly, a lot of companies and private equity firms could care less about that, right? They're more focused on what are you doing now and what's happening.
Brian Rowley:So I do think it's an age old problem that I'm not sure we have an answer to, but I don't disagree what you're saying that we do need to change the structure of how we view the funnel. And when building the plan, making sure that you do have enough diversity within that plan to be able to attract retaining customers, new customers, and then grooming customers who aren't ready to buy within the next six to twelve months. I think that's an important part.
Norman Guadagno:And you said something I think that's important too, Brian. Retaining customers, right? And growing customers, right? That's a key metric. Any company, PE owned or not, but especially PE owned, is going to want to have dollar retention, dollar retention growth, and be able to do that.
Norman Guadagno:And guess what? For most businesses, most of the time, most customers don't actually think about the company. They think about the product that they have from the company or the service that they have from the company, and they don't have that wider lens of all the other things that company may be able to offer them. So part of what you're doing as you're creating that awareness for future buyers is you're also opening up the aperture for your existing base on who you are as a business, on the other things that you may offer, versus the constant like, oh, we got this, you got this, great. And we all do this.
Norman Guadagno:Like, we're using a platform right now to record this podcast. Does this company offer anything else? I have no idea. It's either up to them to inform me, or for me, I'll ultimately be, hey, I wonder if they do x. And I'll think of them as a business.
Norman Guadagno:So I do think that marketing can play a role constantly in thinking about, Okay, we have to get new customers. We have to expand how our existing customer base thinks about us. And we have to create good vibes everywhere. And I'll say that that's part of what marketing does, and it's not in any way sort of trying to belittle it. We create some good vibes because we're out there making sure that people think about our brand.
Norman Guadagno:I've seen this. I saw a brand recently. It's a big brand, right, in its sector. It's a service business. And a, if you're not a customer, you've probably never heard of them.
Norman Guadagno:And b, if you are a customer, you're only a customer who's heard about the thing that they've done for you, and you had no idea that they do anything else. That's a company that has thousands of customers around the globe. And their challenge is, how do we, a, get people who've never heard of us to hear about to know who we are and what we offer, and b, to get all those customers to think outside the box that we solved for them previously into some of the other boxes we can solve.
Brian Rowley:Same one.
Norman Guadagno:It's not an uncommon challenge.
Laura Smith:Yeah. Not uncommon at all. I want to pivot a little bit because I think your role as being a fractional CMO and kind of stepping into these maybe more leaner teams, is just interesting. It's kind of like, I think for marketers out there that maybe haven't experienced, you know, what you're doing and how you're helping. You're you're obviously, like, building teams or you're kind of reshaping teams, reorging in some ways depending what business needs are and all that.
Laura Smith:Now if you had to it's kind of a it's not a trick question because I feel like I really want your gut your gut response because I'm interested. But if you only had one marketing hire to make, all that they could really afford or the company was willing to invest in, what role would it be and why? Or
Norman Guadagno:a podcaster. Or a podcast. Who has a podcast right away. And boom. You're done.
Norman Guadagno:You know, there's no good answer to that, but my gut is that nine times out of 10, it's probably a very good product marketer, because they're going to be the most well rounded ability to talk about the capabilities of the product or the service, be able to articulate a clear value proposition. Usually, they're a good writer. Usually, they can interface with the sales organization and or the engineering product development organization. So I think that a strong product marketer is the go to when you have nothing else on the table.
Brian Rowley:Okay. On that line, let's just pivot that just a little bit, staying kind of in that realm. What tools or systems are non negotiable for a small team?
Norman Guadagno:Oh, that's a tricky one nowadays. Let's assume that they have a pen, as I have in my hand, and a piece of paper. That should be all the modern marketers need.
Brian Rowley:So you're asking for a lot
Norman Guadagno:more You're assuming they write. Know. And obviously, let's just take off the table email and the basics of being able to communicate, And you're going to hate my answer, or maybe you're going to love my answer, but I tell you from my own personal experience as a fractional marketer moving in from company to company into a lot of different scenarios with a lot of different roles, the thing that I always have with me is my AI companion. And it's because it is, in fact, a general purpose tool. I can use that same tool to take a bunch of data, analyze it, give me a summary.
Norman Guadagno:Take a bunch of information and produce a quick deck. Take like, you can do so much if you know how to use AI tools. And I think that most teams are trapped in the, oh, I just want to use it to generate content, or I just want to use it to do this, versus thinking of it as the most flexible tool in your toolbox and the ability to say, Okay, I need it to like, I have a year's worth of email history that this company has been throwing out. I don't know how to make heads or tails out of it. My AI can give me some insights in thirty seconds.
Norman Guadagno:And so I do think that today, we have to start thinking about that as the as the go to partner for every marketer.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, I think that's actually I'm not surprised by the answer. And I think it's actually really valid. But I think the thing that's kind of interesting about that is, had we asked you that question six months ago, you probably would have given us slightly different, I would assume different answer. And how many teams out there today still are not actually even touching the surface of what these AI tools can do. Because to your point, Laura and I use it all the time, right?
Brian Rowley:And we encourage our teams to use it, not necessarily to have the final product be AI driven, but at least to give us the foundation and the starting point for us. I mean, when you look at like building a social plan or building, any type of a marketing structure or things like that, you can put that into an AI tool and within minutes you can get something that you can at least react to. And it didn't cost you anything to do that. So I do agree with you. I think it is probably one of the more powerful tools that are out there.
Brian Rowley:But I also think there's a lot of people that are not even scratching the surface with what it's capable of doing.
Norman Guadagno:I think you're right on with that. And I think also that many companies say, okay, we've gotten a site license to Copilot or chat or whatever the tool may be. There you go. And they don't couple it not just with training, but with teaching marketers how to think about the things you just mentioned, the types of things I see all the time. Yeah.
Norman Guadagno:I have it generate every single first draft of a plan for me. And then I have to go in and read through the plan and make a bunch of changes and and use that. I so that's part of it. It's also I've gotten to the point where I have a whole stockpile of prompts that I've used time and again, and I've refined time and again. And so it's it's not like, everybody, here you go.
Norman Guadagno:Here's your here's your Swiss army knife. Go to town. Like, how many people know what all the tools in that Swiss army knife do? It's like I've looked at that little thing for years, and it finally someone said to me, oh, you know that that's like I was like, really? I didn't know I could do that with that tool.
Norman Guadagno:Like, oh, boy. Who knew? Like, that's where where AI is right now. It's like it's a Swiss army knife. It has 99 blades, and, you know, you know how to use one of them.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. Great point.
Laura Smith:Norman, you've said something before. It must you know, our prep call, specifically, I think we talked about this. But you said everybody's a marketer, but nobody's a marketer.
Brian Rowley:Yes.
Laura Smith:What do you mean by that? Like, let's dig into that a little bit.
Norman Guadagno:Yeah. Welcome welcome to the marketing age. Right? We are all we're all marketers all the time, whether we're through through that's through self promotion on social, whether it's through self or, you know, public analysis of every piece of marketing. We just we're recording this just after the Super Bowl.
Norman Guadagno:Yay, Seahawks. And we're New England fans. Come on. I live in a split household. My wife is a Pats fan.
Norman Guadagno:I'm a Seahawks fan. We do live in New England, so I have to be careful wearing my Seahawks shirt. Congratulations. Congratulations. But beyond that, with all the dialogue was on about the halftime show and about the commercials, Marketing has become sort of the language in which we all speak, the lingua franca of everything around the globe, the sea in which we swim.
Norman Guadagno:But SoFu people actually step back and really understand what marketing means and is and how it operates and how you think about it. And what amazes me is that there are a lot of people who are just relentlessly self promoting and says, I don't know anything about marketing. I'm like, you're actually doing a great job at it, though. So you have to think about a world in which marketing, and of course I'm a marketer, so I can say this, marketing is everything. Right?
Norman Guadagno:And yet, at the same time, so few of us really understand, those of us who are professional marketers, the depth and the thought that goes into being able to create an audience, create a campaign, nurture that audience, be able to take them through a journey, tell a compelling story. Some people stumble into their stories. Most of us have to actually work really diligently to create a compelling story. And that's that's why everyone's a marketer, but maybe nobody's really a marketer nowadays. And and do we have to reset the table to something a little bit different?
Laura Smith:Yeah. It's interesting because the one thing I'll say is that, you know, being always being in a marketing team and obviously, having others within the company or whether if I was on the agency side, the clients, everybody thought they had the greatest marketing ideas. Right? Because it's it was like, what? You wanna do our job?
Laura Smith:Like, that's our job. But because I think it's it's the creative and the fun thing. I'm using air quotes. And no one understands that there's a process and there's research and there's under you know, there's so much to it. Whereas I think even like the Super Bowl ads, you know, like most people who are watching at home, you know, my family, it's funny, my sister and I both have been marketing and advertising, and I I think our family has no idea how we may have contribute or could contribute to something like that.
Laura Smith:But because everyone's just like, oh, that's a funny ad. Doesn't think it's good. Can you even remember whose whose ad it was? You know? So I think it's all consumers just have this mindset of like, oh, well, I that's marketing.
Laura Smith:I could I could do that. That seems so easy when the reality is as marketers, as you said, no, there's so much more to it.
Norman Guadagno:Absolutely. I mean, to the very point, just reflecting on this recent Super Bowl and the great team that won, the harsh reality of it is not all those commercials were necessarily there for the reason you think they were there. And just consider, as an example, I thought it was an interesting commercial, the commercial for Claude. You know, that basically says you're not gonna find ads for AI. Was that a commercial convince people to use Claude, or was that a commercial to position them appropriately against OpenAI?
Norman Guadagno:I will ask you the question to say, which one was it? As marketers, we think about that deeply. We think, what was the real purpose of that commercial? And then that's true with almost every single commercial there. It's like, what was the real purpose?
Norman Guadagno:Was it category creation, positioning? Was it defensive or offensive? Was it grow share? Was it go after a new audience? Those are the things that marketers do.
Brian Rowley:Yeah, I would say too that I think as marketers, we're actually at a point where we're seeing some fairly significant transformation right now. And you had mentioned AI, we talked about the contribution of looking at rather than leads, looking at revenue. We've talked about a couple of different points here. What do you think is as part of this transformation that we're seeing, what do you think is changing the most?
Norman Guadagno:Oh, it's multifold. One, marketers do need to learn how to do more with less, because companies are making a calculated bet, for better or worse, that AI and other tools gives you more oomph, for lack of a better word. Right? Gives you more scale, gives you more capabilities for less. So marketers have to be very thoughtful about doing more with less, and you have to think about the environment in which you are marketing.
Norman Guadagno:You have to think about the thing we just talked about. Right? Everyone is in a sea of information. Like, it's it used to be that you could know something, and you could surprise someone. Hey, did you know so and so?
Norman Guadagno:And now you get like, oh, yeah, I read that yesterday. Because everybody all the time knows everything about everything that they care about and a bunch of stuff they don't going on around them. As marketers, how do we enter into that conversation effectively? Marketers used to be able to say, I'm walking into a room. I just need to get the attention of a few people.
Norman Guadagno:Now you're walking into a room, and everyone's attention is elsewhere. And you just want to get the attention of one person, hopefully. And to get the attention of the whole room, that's a big deal. That's the new environment we're in.
Brian Rowley:That's a really good point. Really good point.
Laura Smith:Okay. We're gonna have some fun now, Norman. Not that this hasn't been a blast.
Norman Guadagno:We're gonna have some real fun. Real fun. Now we're
Brian Rowley:gonna have the
Norman Guadagno:real fun. Real fun. I'm ready.
Laura Smith:We are gonna bring you into the hot seat.
Norman Guadagno:This is a hot seat, baby.
Laura Smith:Oh,
Norman Guadagno:Joey. Woah. Joey's up to it myself.
Laura Smith:The energy there, Joey. Really, Keep in the high gear.
Brian Rowley:No pressure, Norman. No pressure.
Norman Guadagno:No pressure. I I I have my ready. Joey Joey whipped that one out just for me. I was like, oh, yeah. We're gonna really hype this guy up.
Norman Guadagno:Okay.
Brian Rowley:Here you go.
Norman Guadagno:Thank you, Joey. Appreciate it.
Laura Smith:Okay. So we're gonna throw out a few common marketing beliefs, and we want your gut gut reaction. Can be two words, one word, a sentence, whatever. So don't overthink it. Just your gut reaction.
Norman Guadagno:Okay.
Laura Smith:First one, more content equals better marketing.
Norman Guadagno:Oh, better content equals better marketing. And I think that the more, more is a dangerous word.
Brian Rowley:AI is replacing most marketing roles.
Norman Guadagno:Bad, bad, bad thinking. AI is enhancing most marketing roles if you know what to do.
Laura Smith:Okay. You need perfect brand consistency at early stages.
Norman Guadagno:No. Never ever. There's nothing as perfect as I've tried to teach my children endlessly and failed to. Me too. Right?
Norman Guadagno:Right? You are searching for, and we don't have to mention the foolish consistencies and what they are. Right? We are searching for ways in which you can have effective brand consistency. Focusing on perfection, I I say this again and again, to detract from the hot seat momentum here.
Norman Guadagno:Perfect marketing sitting on your desk is of zero value. And yet people relentlessly say, oh, I just gotta tweak this thing. I just gotta tweak that eventually. Stop that. Get it out the door.
Norman Guadagno:Marketing is an experiment that's going on all the time.
Laura Smith:What is the saying? Don't make perfect the enemy of good?
Brian Rowley:That's right. I was just gonna say, all right, exactly. I mean, that is where we're at, absolutely. Cut marketing budgets. Cut marketing first when budgets tighten.
Norman Guadagno:I feel sick in my stomach when you say that, Brian, but let me react.
Brian Rowley:I do too, but I mean, I just, that's the reaction we're trying to get to.
Norman Guadagno:Right. Oh, you're so sick. It's like,
Laura Smith:we're also in marketing.
Norman Guadagno:I think it's absolutely idiotic, but at the same time, unfortunately, I have seen in real world too many marketing teams have bloated budgets or budgets that aren't effective. So it's why it makes me sick because it's it's rooted in a truth that you can cut marketing and still be able to get great results because there's bloat or there's misdirected funds.
Laura Smith:Fractional leaders can't truly own strategy.
Norman Guadagno:Woah. Woah.
Laura Smith:This is the hot seat, isn't it?
Norman Guadagno:Absolutely disagree. Strategy is owned by the people who are able to own strategy. I know that's recursive, but the the reality is that all too often people think strategy is this thing that someone sits and creates strategy, and let me bring to you the strategy now. No. That's absolute BS.
Norman Guadagno:Right? The reality is strategy is something that requires you to be in the in the trenches, understanding what's happening with the business, and have sufficient perspective, which is what fractional executives do, because we've been operators for a long time, to turn that into a coherent strategy that then gets executed.
Laura Smith:I like it.
Brian Rowley:Well, Norman, it has been a true pleasure having you with us today. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for the insights. I'm sure I know we've learned a lot. I'm sure our audience has learned a lot and we'd love to have you back at a future time, but thank you for being here.
Norman Guadagno:My absolute pleasure. Yeah. Thank you both.
Laura Smith:Thanks, Norman. It was fun and thank you for surviving the hot seat. It wasn't that bad, right?
Norman Guadagno:No, it wasn't. I was afraid of the question that was coming next. I'm glad we've reached the end of our time together.
Brian Rowley:So Laura, I think there's a lot of things we've learned from this one. And I love actually the last comment that Norman made, which was think about the environment where you're actually marketing. And I think it's really important, especially when we go back and try to tie things back to connecting sort of that overall marketing strategy specifically to revenue. If you don't understand the audience that you're marketing to, then your success of being able to be effective in that is actually gonna be minimal. So I think there's some really good things.
Brian Rowley:I don't know about you, but I was surprised a little bit, but not entirely that that one tool would be an AI tool out of all the tools. I mean, if you think of the tools that you know, you and your team are working with every day and and and some of the things that we're seeing, but AI, fairly new tool, is the one tool that's there. I I find that really interesting.
Laura Smith:Yeah. I really the conversation's so relevant for us, I feel like, because, you know, they're specializing in smaller teams, you know, how do we have to do more with less? Like, we live that every day. So I think the conversation just sits definitely at the forefront because it is hard. Like, everything we do every day is trying to fight and to demonstrate the revenue, but that's why I like the conversation going.
Laura Smith:Like, I liked his funnel kind of, reframing because I think we do have to change the way we position and talk about things to people that may not understand truly what even the funnel means. And so I think there were some good, insights there that we can carry into our own our own, day to day. And I really felt like his quick gut responses on all of those hot seat questions were very interesting. They almost like Joey Joe. Like, there could be quick little snippets of those answers that could really resonate with a lot of different audiences because, they felt very meaningful and thoughtful.
Laura Smith:So, yes, it was a great great session.
Brian Rowley:Yeah. I would totally agree. For those of you out there, thanks for listening. And most importantly, if you like what you heard today, be sure to follow us. If you wanna hear more from Norman Guadagno, you can follow him on LinkedIn.