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Welcome to GTM News Desk, the podcast where Mark Kilens and Rachel Elsts Downey bring you real talk backed by real action. Twice a month, we cut through the noise to deliver the essential resources, news, and expert takes you need to create impactful, People-first GTM motions. From trending topics to clickbait headlines, we sift through the clutter to highlight what truly matters in the world of B2B Go-to-Market.
With nearly 25 years of combined experience working with top B2B brands like Drift and HubSpot, we’re sharing our insights and advice to help you navigate the best (and worst) GTM strategies. Whether you’re a startup founder or a CMO, tune in to GTM News Desk for analysis, candid discussions, and actionable tips that prioritize people and drive real results.
Nick Bennett [00:00:00]:
The costs, the OpenAI, all these companies are going to continue to go up because of the GPU power, all of that stuff. What's the end outcome here?
Mark Kilens [00:00:08]:
At the end of the day, Gross domestic product GDP is a measure of productivity. So the idea with AI in many ways is we're going to be more productive as people and have more prosperity and more good things to come because of it.
Emma Stratton [00:00:21]:
One thing that is kind of really true about customers is they want it simpler. They tend to like the simpler things and they're worried more about more simple needs.
Mark Kilens [00:00:34]:
Real talk backed up with real action. This is GTM News Desk.
Nick Bennett [00:00:40]:
I'm Nick Bennett.
Mark Kilens [00:00:41]:
And I'm Mark Kilens.
Nick Bennett [00:00:42]:
Let's see what's trending.
Mark Kilens [00:00:51]:
Welcome to another episode of GTM News Desk. There is a shit ton of stuff going on in the world of go to market right now. AI, AI, AI. You know, it's, it's not going anywhere, Nick.
Nick Bennett [00:01:05]:
It's not. And it's, I feel like everyone's talking about it on LinkedIn too. I feel like you can't scroll LinkedIn without finding one thing about AI. I challenge you to do that. Anyone listening?
Mark Kilens [00:01:14]:
Well, LinkedIn is talking about AI in some basic B type terms in my opinion. So what we have here for you today is two interesting stories before we get into the featured segment with an amazing person who we talk a little bit about AI, but she's more on our side when it comes to AI. Stay tuned for that in segment number three. But our first two segments, the stories of the week. The first one is Benedict Evans. Nick released one of his annual reports and this year he called it, do you know what he called it?
Nick Bennett [00:01:45]:
AI Eats the World.
Mark Kilens [00:01:47]:
AI eats the World. That's it. Soft eats the world. He did one of those a long time ago. Now it is time for AI Eating the World. We're going to have the link in the show notes. You got to check this one out. There's so much, I mean it's like 120 slides.
Mark Kilens [00:01:59]:
It's, it's, it's awesome. I, I subscribe to his newsletter every week. I read it every week. But he's got a great quote in this deck from someone that want to just call out right now, Jim Barksdale. You folks listening who are savvy folks in, in the business world will know Jim Barksdale name. And he has said in the past, Jim has said there are two ways to make money. You can buy, bundle or unbundle. And if you think about that in the context of your business, what you sell or in the context of AI, there is a massive tide shift happening in terms of how to think about how these large language models are going to evolve over the next few years.
Mark Kilens [00:02:35]:
Are we going to need more software, less software? How is this all going to work? At the end of the day, that's kind of one of the big points he makes in his presentation. We're not sure if LLMs are new infrastructure, are they APIs, are they platforms? Is it a new UX, is it a combination of those things? 2025 Nick is, I think when we will start to figure some of these things out. So take a look at the slides. There's a ton to unpack. But just, just know this, and this is one of Steve Jobs famous quotes. It's not the customer's job to know what they want. Think about that. It's not the customer's job to know what they want.
Mark Kilens [00:03:14]:
They know what they probably need, but it's your job to figure out how to satisfy that need.
Nick Bennett [00:03:20]:
That's interesting too. And it's, you know, going back to like this whole LLM thing if you think about. I was reading something from OpenAI the other day, but they're actually losing money on their new, their new tier that they put out because they didn't think of so many people were using it and overspending. Capex has less downside than losing next platform. This was something that Benedict Evans put in there and what was interesting was there was a quote from the Anthropic CEO back in April that the models that are in training now are closer to in cost to 1 billion. And then in 2025, which we're in now, in 2026, he thinks that they'll get more towards 5 billion and 10 billion. So it's going to be caught more costly to run these platforms. Which makes me think like, I mean, are we betting everything on this? Like, I mean costs obviously to, to the consumer is going to go up.
Nick Bennett [00:04:11]:
There's just no way around it unless they start to do more ads and things. But I don't know, it's, it's. That piece was what I found interesting where it's like, all right, cool, more people are going to be using AI. The costs from, you know, Anthropic, OpenAI, all these companies are going to continue to go up because of the GPU power, all of that stuff. Stuff. What's the end outcome here?
Mark Kilens [00:04:33]:
Well, I think, I think the cost, the investment needs to continue to increase, but the actual cost to run these things will go down as they get, as they learn, as they get smarter, as they get more efficient. So I think from a consumer standpoint, the cost will be lower over time. But in the beginning there's a big investment. I saw an article the other day too that Microsoft is investing 80 billion billion with a B dollars into AI data centers in 2025.
Nick Bennett [00:04:59]:
Interesting.
Mark Kilens [00:05:01]:
So like they have to, they, you know, you kind of have to build it for them to come if you know that kind of, kind of quote or you know, thought exercise, right? Like you got to build the infrastructure, you got to build the models, you got to collect the data, you got to process everything. And then as that's built and done, it's not like you have to, you know, build a new LLM every time someone uses the actual service. And then from a gpu, electricity standpoint, hardware, software standpoint, those costs will go down as well over time because at the end of the day like once you ingest all the data that exists in the world, you know, yes, granted, more data will always be created. This podcast is a form of data that then the AI could use to again make, make a better type of service or result for someone. But it becomes more efficient over time as it learns. I know very little, you know, very little in this whole thing. Our point is check out Benedict Evans presentation. He's got always a ton of good links and citations in it and it is a very thoughtful way to look at what's happening right now.
Mark Kilens [00:06:04]:
And he proposes a lot of questions that you should maybe take back to your team, your executive team to help you understand the ramifications of AI not just on your go to market, but on your product, on your business and on your customers and even your customers customers. It's a mind bending thing when you start to think about it. But you have to have these conversations and of course like we've been saying, you have to be trying different aspects of AI, AI out if you want to truly move in that direction of figuring out how to use it for your not just personal benefit but your business's benefit 100%. Second story. Another AI related story. Nick, it's about GTM Automation. Have you heard that term?
Nick Bennett [00:06:44]:
I have actually. Not as much, but I've been reading a little bit about it.
Mark Kilens [00:06:50]:
How would you define it?
Nick Bennett [00:06:51]:
So I think GTM Automation is basically like, I think agents could end up purchasing software for you down the road and running some of your digital life, but it's running aspects of your life. I don't know if I would say like autonomously but I think that's, that's part of it.
Mark Kilens [00:07:09]:
That's, that's definitely like one piece of a large shift like we know marketing automation. Marketing automation has been around for decades now and it's specifically to marketing now it's like how will, how will these agentic systems. So this is coming from Dharmesh CTO, co founder of HubSpot. Simple AI is his URL for his newsletter. Highly recommend you subscribe to that one as well. He did one just the other week about the three things that he's focused on and predicting in 2025. One is the rise of multi agent networks, agentic systems, vertical agents so agents that are specific to some type of business or vertical of business or agents with more specificity and agents that to your point Nick, are going to help handle aspects of our digital lives as humans. Maybe it's like yeah, go find me the best.
Mark Kilens [00:07:58]:
I'm just making this up at the top of my mind but best, best car to buy based off of these parameters. I have three kids, I live in this city, I, I drive this much. I don't want a gas car, I want to spend between these things. Go find me the best car to buy and then go buy it. So it's going to be wild, right? This relates to Benedict Evans like macro kind of view of what he's seeing and the things that are happening to then help companies and people build this new layer of technology. So yeah, he runs something called agent AI. I know you've checked it out, you use it a little bit. And yeah, he's focused on how do we build GTM automation.
Mark Kilens [00:08:37]:
So not just for marketing but across the entire kind of customer experience and also back office, not just front office but back office automation that's going to make marketers, sellers, CS people, rev ops, people's lives more productive. At the end of the day, gross domestic product GDP is a measure of productivity. So the idea with AI in many ways is we're going to be more productive as people and have more prosperity and more, more good things to come because of it. Because all these manual rote tasks, you know, are going to be automated thanks to intelligent machines. And that's what he thinks is going to tip this year. And I tend to agree with him. I think there's a lot of interesting companies out there. I think it's gonna, it's going to come out this year.
Mark Kilens [00:09:18]:
I don't think it's going to tip this year because a lot of these companies now have to adopt it, implement it, use It, I think it's going to be a few more years until we see massive adoption of this. And there's true, very clear, like productivity gains and changes to how companies hire who they hire, all these things. But it's, it's a big year I think 2025, where it becomes much more embedded into different parts of a business and becomes more, you could say, real, if you will.
Nick Bennett [00:09:47]:
Yeah, I'm, I'm excited for it. And like you said, I've been playing around with, you know, some of Dharmesh is the agent, like going from YouTube videos, which it does incredibly well, to LinkedIn posts. It's like so real, so authentic. There's a few other agents on there that I've been playing around with, but yeah, huge believer in it, excited to see how the whole kind of how it shapes the industry.
Mark Kilens [00:10:05]:
So, so what do you do with the YouTube to LinkedIn thing? Explain that.
Nick Bennett [00:10:08]:
So what you're able to do is post a URL of your YouTube video, pop it in and then put what are your brand guidelines? You know, what do you, what do you care about stuff like that. And it will create a LinkedIn post based on your YouTube video. Whether it's a short, whether it's a long form video. It, it will give you a few different options and you pay like a credit or something to be able to do it. But the outputs from what I have tested are phenomenal.
Mark Kilens [00:10:30]:
Interesting. So it's taking some content, helping you repurpose it in a very smart, thoughtful way.
Nick Bennett [00:10:38]:
Exactly.
Mark Kilens [00:10:39]:
And creating the product for LinkedIn which is in this case is a LinkedIn post that it feels is going to have a high chance of getting a good amount of eyeballs on because I mean, at the end of the day, if you think about LinkedIn, right, LinkedIn's doing some stuff with AI. They are forcing people to write posts in a specific way if you want to have a chance of getting a good reach on your posts. It's a shame because LinkedIn 5, 6 years ago was not like that and it was much more of a people first, organic type of platform. It's shifted in a way that is more reminiscent of Facebook and I'm not loving it as much anymore. Really?
Nick Bennett [00:11:15]:
Yeah. I mean, Microsoft owns it and like you said, Microsoft's doing all that. It'll be interesting to see how much Microsoft puts AI already. I mean it's already in LinkedIn but how much more they leverage it.
Mark Kilens [00:11:27]:
What do you think?
Nick Bennett [00:11:27]:
I think it's going to become a pay to play platform. Ultimately they Want to push, you know, thought leader ads and everything else tank everyone's reach and make them pay. I mean, I'm, I think we're already seeing that. I think, you know, Microsoft will just continue to push that, that narrative.
Mark Kilens [00:11:42]:
Interesting. Okay, well, we have a great conversation with Emma coming up in segment number three. She's a product marketing master and if there's anything you need to do really, really well now and in the future is to figure out your strategic story, figure out the framing you need to build your funnel, create a flywheel that is going to attract the right people and get them to talk about your brand and products. It is going to come down to positioning, messaging, and storytelling. So Emma is going to really teach us a lot. So stay tuned for episode or sorry, segment number three in this episode. And then of course, the exclusion exclusive content that comes after. You can find it on tackinsider.com let's get to the conversation with Eminek.
Mark Kilens [00:12:29]:
Time for segment number three. Hope you're enjoying today's episode. Nick, I mean, forgot if I brought this up already, but you got a new hat. That's interesting.
Nick Bennett [00:12:40]:
I. I did get a new hat. Yeah. Vin Matano actually sent it to me. He huge fan of his videos, so he sent it. And I'm a huge believer of the creator economy, so it's been my go to hat recently.
Mark Kilens [00:12:53]:
Well, yeah, you just had a book come out, so. Yeah, we know that. But like, you can tell Vin, thanks for my hat. I didn't get one.
Nick Bennett [00:13:00]:
I'll have him send you one.
Mark Kilens [00:13:02]:
Okay. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But that's not the point of, of segment number three. We are here with Emma from Punchy. Emma, what's going on?
Emma Stratton [00:13:10]:
Oh, you know, it's Monday morning. Just psyched to be here with you. You're wearing the tie, which makes me happy. It' often I'm on a call with someone in a tie. It's pretty old school these days, you.
Mark Kilens [00:13:21]:
Know, the professional versus the amateur. Professionals wear ties, amateurs don't.
Emma Stratton [00:13:26]:
So that's simple.
Mark Kilens [00:13:28]:
They wear hats.
Emma Stratton [00:13:29]:
Right? That's right. That's right.
Mark Kilens [00:13:30]:
No, it's great to have you. I definitely know Punchy. You folks do terrific positioning and messaging. Before we went live, Em and I were trying to figure out how do we know each other from the past. There's been something at some point.
Emma Stratton [00:13:43]:
It has, yeah.
Mark Kilens [00:13:46]:
But today we're going to talk about one of the most important things that Nick and I talk about. Probably way too much, but is ultimately going to be a massive factor in the success and growth of your company, which is positioning and messaging and storytelling. But let's just start with positioning. Mf. Before we do that, I want to give you an opportunity to do a quick intro. We kind of teed you up before this segment, but, like, what's the. What's the real intro for. For Emma?
Emma Stratton [00:14:14]:
Oh, no, I can't take that pressure. I feel like I do the terrible pitch of myself, but, yeah. I'm the founder of Punchy. We're a training and consulting firm that does nothing but positioning and messaging for B2B tech companies. So been around for about nine years, almost 10 years. I'm also the author of Make It Punchy, which is a book on how to write simple tech that wins hearts, minds, and markets. So pretty much dedicated the last decade of my life to figuring out how do you write simple, clear, human messaging in the tech space so that people finally understand what the heck all these complicated software products are and actually buy them.
Mark Kilens [00:14:52]:
This is great because, like, let's just start with that first question, so. Because you just led right into it. So thank you. How do you make messaging positioning feel more human? Like, so it doesn't sound like corporate jargon and very vanilla.
Emma Stratton [00:15:07]:
Yeah. So there's two parts, right? The first part is like a strategic part. You have to actually choose a stance, right? You've got to stand for something that actually connects with what your buyers want and care about. So people have a really hard time with that part. I. I find that companies either don't know, you know, really what it is that the buyer wants and they're too busy talking about themselves, or they kind of throw everything into their messaging, like, just talk about absolutely everything. So that's the one piece. It's like the strategic piece.
Emma Stratton [00:15:39]:
You know, what are the few things that we want to be known for and we want to put out into the markets and say again and again so that we become known for it. The other side of it is the language and the way that we actually write this stuff. So B2B. I swear, no other industry talks the way we talk in B2B tech, right? Like, whenever I do training, I do talks and stuff. I ask people, like, raise your hand if you came from a different industry or, you know, used to do something totally different before you got into tech. And the people who raised their hand, I'm like, remember when you first read something and you're like, oh, shit, I gotta write like this now. And everyone's like, oh, my God. Yeah, it was so stressful.
Emma Stratton [00:16:17]:
So we're this industry that is just obsessed with our own jargon, with our buzzwords. We wanna sound smart, and then instead you sound vanilla and people don't even understand what you're talking about. So being human is using regular human language, conversational phrasing, that's really the key. So it's, it's two parts, right? It's like actually connect to what people care about and then use language that's, you know, conversational, simple. Right. Not all this weird long words.
Mark Kilens [00:16:48]:
Clarity, not confusion.
Emma Stratton [00:16:50]:
Yes, right. Like clarity, not confusion.
Mark Kilens [00:16:52]:
I also heard vividly remember this back in like 2009, I was at an event and it was a workshop. I was getting certified in landing pages and the guy, I'm blanking on his name, but he just always said this. Clarity trumps persuasion.
Emma Stratton [00:17:07]:
Yeah. Especially in tech. Especially in tech. 100% because it's so confusing, you know, I mean, these products, these technologies, they are complex and they're big. And so it's really easy to make it. And. And people tend to make it even more complicated. It's like you already have this complicated thing and then people over complicated.
Emma Stratton [00:17:27]:
So clarity is amazing if you can achieve that.
Mark Kilens [00:17:31]:
Love that.
Nick Bennett [00:17:32]:
Well, let's talk about the top mistakes out there that companies are making when they're crafting messaging. Because I know, you know, clarity is important, but I'm sure that you, you run across a lot of other big mistakes that, that companies make. What are some of those mistakes? And then on the flip side, like, how could you make them better and make them not mistakes?
Emma Stratton [00:17:51]:
Yeah, I mean, I hate to say mistakes are kind of. You know, I think messaging is hard. Right. And so I think there's things that people do with, with good intentions, but it doesn't really work. So the first thing I see is just too many ideas in one sentence, in one paragraph, too much on one page. And that is often messaging by committee, you know, or there is this fear of not seeing something that someone might care about. And so I'll never forget seeing this value proposition at the top of a homepage. It was, I think, a cybersecurity company.
Emma Stratton [00:18:30]:
And it was like a paragraph above the fold and there was like 15 benefits in there. It was like, drive productivity, reduce risk, like manage this. It was insane. I think there was like 50 words. And I think that is so common. We just think, let me just take everything, you know, tick every box. And we've covered everything. Yes, but really, you have this word salad.
Emma Stratton [00:18:52]:
People don't even understand it. I do think that's one of the biggest thing that happens out there, I would say that. And of course, the other is talking about yourself and ignoring the person you're writing for. You're like, let me just get all my credentials and let me just tell you about me. And, you know, the reader is just forgotten. And that would be the other thing. So I would say those are the two biggest things that I see happening pretty much all the time.
Nick Bennett [00:19:21]:
I love that. That's someone you know. I know you know about writing books. Like, I just wrote a book that just came out.
Emma Stratton [00:19:28]:
Awesome. Congrats. It's huge, right? Like, huge, right?
Nick Bennett [00:19:32]:
Yeah, it was. I will never do it again.
Emma Stratton [00:19:34]:
Oh, you don't have another book in you?
Nick Bennett [00:19:37]:
No, no, no. After, After. After dealing with a publisher and missing so many deadlines, they canceled it on me twice. And it was just. I'm not used to writing in that format. And I've written a lot. I've done, you know, blogs, emails, right letters, LinkedIn for years. But, like, I'm not used to quoting stuff certain ways, having it in, like, you know, the correct kind of, I guess, parameters or, like, you know, citations, things like that.
Mark Kilens [00:20:03]:
It was just.
Nick Bennett [00:20:04]:
It was a lot for me to learn because I was already trying to, like you said, figure out, like, I'm not writing this for me. I'm writing this and putting my audience, like, at the center of, like, why I'm writing this. But all of those other pieces added so much complexity for me that that alone probably makes this. I don't have another one in me.
Emma Stratton [00:20:21]:
Oh, well, I'm not going to write you off just yet. The fact that you've done one and completed it means that you could probably do more. Who knows?
Mark Kilens [00:20:29]:
There you go. So let's go back to those two things, though. How do you think people. People should not fall into those traps?
Emma Stratton [00:20:35]:
So let's start with the talking about ourselves. I think first you just have to realize that you have that problem and you want to focus on your customer. Right. And what matters to them. So my whole messaging approach is really built on the customer and leading with what matters to them. Of course, you want that also to connect to what your product can uniquely deliver. That has to also be there. But it is really kind of crafting your hierarchy and focus of your messaging based on what matters the most to them.
Emma Stratton [00:21:05]:
I think what people don't realize is that when you're writing messaging for a tech product, you essentially need to translate it into a different language for your audience. Right. Because, you know, when we sit down and write about our products, and we know everything about it. We write about it, like, assuming everyone else is an expert, and we make it too complicated and. And we talk about the things that we know matters. But one thing that is kind of really true about customers is they want it simpler. They tend to like the simpler things, and they're worried more about more simple needs. We get focused on like, oh, we've all these hot new features.
Emma Stratton [00:21:42]:
We want to write about these. But really, customers usually want, you know, certain more basic things in play, right? They want reliability, you know, they want it to be easy to use, whatever. And so crafting your messaging for them is the way that you can kind of make sure you're doing it right. Right. Using them as your North Star. But that takes a mindset shift. And you also have to know your customers. You got to talk to them.
Emma Stratton [00:22:06]:
You know, you've got to kind of get that understanding. You have to be able to empathize. So that's that one piece. But when you do that, the second piece becomes a lot easier. That whole jamming too many ideas in. I think people do that a lot of times when they don't have a clear understanding on what matters to the customer. Customer. If they did have that understanding, they'd be like, oh, we don't need all that other stuff in there.
Emma Stratton [00:22:27]:
Let's just talk about, you know, this efficiency story, right? Or let's talk about what we know matters to them, which is reducing risk or something. So knowing your customer can really make the writing part easier as well. It becomes easier to make those decisions around, you know, what are the few key things we want to talk about here? And can also give you ammunition when you're trying to get alignment. Or you got stakeholders, right, who want to jam all the things in. You can be like, hey, but our customers said they only care about X, so why are we talking about Z?
Nick Bennett [00:22:57]:
So agree.
Mark Kilens [00:22:58]:
Let's get specific. I think some of the best positioning messaging is also very specific and simple. Yes, specific. So it's okay to offend people. I've offended a lot of people and brands on this podcast, the show already, and we're only like 12 episodes in. I will continue to offend people, and I find I have thick skin. I don't get offended often. I don't even care what people think.
Mark Kilens [00:23:16]:
Nick probably knows this about me right now. He, like, he literally does not care what people think. And that's a good and a bad thing. But anyway, I digress. Name one or two brands that you think are doing great at this in B2B in tech maybe and some that just suck at this right now.
Emma Stratton [00:23:33]:
Oh, so I, I never talk about people who are doing it bad, so. Oh, come on.
Mark Kilens [00:23:39]:
I will name people.
Nick Bennett [00:23:39]:
I'll name people then.
Emma Stratton [00:23:41]:
No, I, I won't do that. Will you name?
Mark Kilens [00:23:44]:
Why not? Why not?
Emma Stratton [00:23:45]:
Because I don't, you know, I have compassion for people trying to do this. Like, it's hard, you know, And I also, I hate teardowns. I hate public teardowns. Really, I do. I think it's lazy, cheap content. Sorry, that's my hot take. You know, it's like anyone can come in and be a critic and tear something down to big up. I don't know if the person who's tearing it down is great at messaging also.
Emma Stratton [00:24:11]:
There's so much shit that goes on behind the scenes of creating messaging at a company. People getting involved, people, politics, strategy. The words on the page are yes, what came out the end. But you know, there's a lot of reasons why messaging can end up not good. And so, yeah, I don't like tear downs. I, I do, I don't like tear downs.
Mark Kilens [00:24:37]:
So I, I respect it. I mean, I don't like the teardown either. I do like learning from failure though. And I think, you know, if we, if we do it right, we give some people some pointers. But, okay, we can focus on the good. The other, the other thing I'll just quickly say on this before you give us some of your like favorite good examples is, and maybe we talk about this as a follow up, but messaging without the right visuals and design treatment can also fail very badly. Like, you know what I mean? So. Okay, well, but let's talk about good examples.
Emma Stratton [00:25:06]:
Yeah, good example. So my favorite one as of late now, they're early, early stage. And I think when you are early, early stage, you can write better messaging because you've got hopefully a very defined audience and a very like one product. Right? It's very simple so you can get very targeted and specific. So my favorite right now is Butterdocks. So they are like a, yeah, Google Docs alternative. And I really like them because it's, it's such a great example of understanding your audience and going narrow and really speaking to what matters to them, you know, because I'm kind of their target audience, sort of. I'm like, damn, this is good.
Emma Stratton [00:25:46]:
You know, this is exactly right. Like they get it right. They understand me. So whenever I have a company who writes, I always say write, prove to your audience that you get them in your messaging, like write about problems the way they think about them, you know, touch on that aspiration that maybe they haven't even articulated in their mind yet, but it's there. Right. And prove that you totally get them and you understand them. So Butterdocks is an example that kind of proves that kind of they get it. I mean there's a lot of companies that do nice kind of clear messaging.
Emma Stratton [00:26:20]:
You know, Stripe is one. I think that they do quite well just being very kind of clear and straightforward and they kind of manage all of their stuff well. Right. It's complicated when you can serve everyone right. You've got all these different products and things. I think they do a nice job of keeping it, you know, straightforward and simple. I also really like GitHub's, you know, copy on their website, like for such a large brand, but also a technical audience. I think they do a really nice job of balancing that line between it's still for technical audience, but it's approachable and you can read it and it's written in a casual style.
Emma Stratton [00:26:58]:
I really like them because people often think like, well, we're super technical, we can't be approachable or we can't make it simple. Right. But I think they do a really good job. So I kind of always like them. Yeah, I don't know who. I'm sure there's tons of people doing kind of hot, you know, hot product LED companies that are doing good messaging, but I can't think of any right now. I'm blanking. It's Monday morning and I've only had half a cup of coffee.
Mark Kilens [00:27:24]:
That's right, that's right. Nick will ask another, easier question and then maybe we go into the exclusive section, we go a little bit deeper, we can get, we can get thinking I can share some examples that I like. But Nick, you have a question you want to ask, and this is a good one about like enabling or working with internal stakeholders. I should say.
Nick Bennett [00:27:40]:
Yeah. So you know, what advice would you give the teams that are navigating that tough internal alignment challenges when you're building messaging?
Emma Stratton [00:27:49]:
Yeah, this is the hardest part of messaging. So I'm a messaging strategist, but I'm really an alignment strategist because that is what they pay me for. Folks like that's it. Because it's wrangling the cross functional team. So my biggest, the thing that I preach all the time is messaging is half strategy, half writing. A lot of people kind of think it's all writing. No, the strategy is most of it and when you leave it until the writing and you just share it with people, when people are tearing it apart, they're actually tearing apart and disagreeing on strategy. Right? But, but they're doing it via the words and comments.
Emma Stratton [00:28:26]:
And yeah, and it's really, it's really traumatic for the writer but actually they're tearing apart strategy. And so if you can divorce the strategy part from the writing part. So that's what I do in my method when I work with clients. So I will spend time with a cross functional team and I will get us based on kind of understanding the, you know, the market and what customers think, et cetera. I will get, get us talking about potential directions for, you know, the value proposition, you know, tied to the positioning and also the core benefits and the story. And we will have a conversation around that and we will align on a direction. So we will say, okay, we've all agreed that the value prop is going to be around speed and we have agreed that the three key benefits are going to be about X, Y and Z. Right.
Emma Stratton [00:29:14]:
So we will spend our time talking about that. It's actually a lot easier to align and land on. Okay, we should be talking about these three or four concepts. Once we agree on that, then I will move into the messaging, right? And then of like, okay, let's bring those concepts to life in a message. Here are some options for the value prop. Here are some options for the benefit based on our strategy. And then you know, people are not going to be arguing about the strategy. So hopefully now it'll just be more minor like you know the word Smith, like oh, I like that word.
Emma Stratton [00:29:49]:
You can never actually avoid those comments, but it should be a more contained conversation and feedback because you've, you've all agreed on the strategic direction of the messaging. Now we're just getting to the actual wordsmithing part. So I always tell people to do this because people ask me all the time like oh, what do I do? Alignment. But you can divorce strategy from the writing and also pull people into that. So I always work with a cross functional team. I'm usually doing top level, either company or like platform messaging. So it's maybe not always possible if you're messaging something smaller. But the more you can kind of get thoughts or draw people in, in that strategy phase, the more receptive they're going to be to the writing part.
Emma Stratton [00:30:32]:
Because people just want to be heard. They want to be a part of the process. They don't want someone to just come in like slam, here's here's new messaging you have to use. People want to be involved. So the more you can kind of bring people in, in the strategy phase, I think the more successful it'll be to get alignment.
Mark Kilens [00:30:49]:
Very well said. I mean, it's just like how you should bring a designer in, any creative person in at the very beginning project.
Emma Stratton [00:30:55]:
Exactly. I know, it's just. Just please do it. It'll make it easier. But.
Mark Kilens [00:31:00]:
So I want to ask this last question. Go back to AI though, for a moment. AI messaging, positioning, trying to use AI for strategies, Trying to use AI to write. Like, how do you think about AI right now and how it's helping not just product marketers, but anyone doing messaging, positioning, work. Good things, bad things. What do you think?
Emma Stratton [00:31:18]:
Oh, as a writing tool, I thought you meant like messaging about AI, which is like.
Mark Kilens [00:31:23]:
No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, not that one yet. No, no.
Emma Stratton [00:31:26]:
Yeah. So, okay, I. I will be honest. I don't really use AI for myself for writing, and that's because I'm a writer and I like doing it myself. And I'm better than AI. That's right. I'm better than I. Yep, you heard it.
Mark Kilens [00:31:41]:
I'm the same way. I feel the same exact way.
Emma Stratton [00:31:43]:
Yeah, I'm better, I've better than I. And so to me, writing is thinking. Right? So there is the process of kind of writing, getting something down, working on it, refining it is you sharpening your idea. Right? So I don't believe that you can just leap over that. Okay. I do not think you should. If you got to pump out a huge blog or whatever, I guess you could use AI. But I hear that that is not really working for people, but for me, for messaging, I don't think there's really a need for AI.
Emma Stratton [00:32:15]:
You could. @ the final stages, when you kind of have, like, your headline and your message and you're like, I don't know, could this be tighter? I know some people will put that through ChatGPT and ask it to, like, become tighter or try X, Y or Z kind of polishing it. I think, you know, that's fine to do that, but you got to start with your mind. With messaging, it's not easy, you know, and so you have to kind of go through that process in your mind to figure out exactly what is kind of the hook and all of that. You can't skip over that. But you can use AI, I think, to polish and tighten things up, you know, when you've finished it. So that's what I believe. But I am pretty anti AI with, with writing.
Emma Stratton [00:32:59]:
I mean, I think you put things in ChatGPT and you get all the jargon and the crap that you see out there. I mean, it's trained on all the crap that's out there. So you're just, you're just gonna get more of it. Right. So you can't just go in there, be like, hey, ChatGPT, I need new messaging for my, you know, whatever, and expect to get something. You'll get words, you'll get words, but you can't outsource it. I don't believe so.
Mark Kilens [00:33:25]:
Nick, agree or disagree?
Nick Bennett [00:33:27]:
I agree for sure. I mean, I think there is things that AI can help with and like, get me started. Like it. It could help me with some ideation type things. But yeah, I mean, I go back to like mind can then riff on that and I could always use it to get tighter at the end because I like to. I tend to have run on sentences. It is really good from time to time.
Emma Stratton [00:33:46]:
So it's good at that.
Nick Bennett [00:33:48]:
Yeah, I mean that's, that's the way that I'm using it.
Emma Stratton [00:33:50]:
Yeah.
Mark Kilens [00:33:51]:
I'm curious to see AI taking all of the good written copy from a, from a brand and their messaging framework and hierarchy and their brand book and all this stuff and say, hey, use this as a tool to help us create better copy. Because then it's using the inference and the context of that. Like, have you seen that yet?
Emma Stratton [00:34:10]:
I haven't seen that. That's not to say it's. It's not happening. You know, I guess that's the dream, you know, that's the dream.
Mark Kilens [00:34:18]:
Agreed. They were calling it. I was at an event, a very private event, and we were talking about this, the small group and all these large B2C companies like Kantar, like, you know, huge agencies that, you know, cater to B2C Brain, a brand brain. A brain brain.
Emma Stratton [00:34:35]:
A brand brain. I don't know. It's. Do we really want to, you know, I don't. Do we really want to like replace all of ourselves? I don't know. If we hand all the, the copy over to the robot and we just have robot stuff. I don't know. I think there is a human aspect that we sense and want.
Emma Stratton [00:34:57]:
I. We're feeling it on LinkedIn, right? All the AI crap on there, it's just like, when is this all going to just collapse and eat itself in like six months? I don't know. So I don't know. There is going to be some pendulum swing. I don't know what it is. But there is going to be, you know, if we keep going this way.
Mark Kilens [00:35:17]:
That's why Nika are long and big on people first.
Emma Stratton [00:35:21]:
That's right. I'm like, can we bet on humans? Like, why are we so like, yeah, let's give it to AI. It's like, come on. Why are we doing this?
Mark Kilens [00:35:29]:
You know, slippery slope. Emma. This has been fantastic, folks. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Check out tac insider.com if you've already subscribed, you can get the exclusive content that's coming next right on that website. If you haven't hit the subscribe button, it takes 10 seconds. Emma, thank you so much.
Emma Stratton [00:35:45]:
Thanks for having me.
Mark Kilens [00:35:48]:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of GTM News Desk presented by TACK Insider. To dive into the exclusive content with our guests today, head to the link in the show notes to subscribe to TACK Insider. Until next time. I'm Mark Kilens.
Nick Bennett [00:36:03]:
And I'm Nick Bennett. Keep it people first, everybody.