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On this podcast, we’re on a mission – to change and disrupt the way people think about B2B marketing one insightful conversation at a time. Get inspiration from interviews with B2B marketers and industry experts who share their stories, achievements, thoughts on trending topics, and give B2B marketing tips and recommendations. This show is hosted by Christian Klepp, Co-founder of EINBLICK Consulting.
SPEAKERS
Christian Klepp, Molly Strawn-Carreño
Molly Strawn-Carreño 00:00
What is actually the struggles that's going on for your customer right now, or your ideal persona, especially with all the AI things going on right now? What what are they afraid of? What are the changes? What are the things that are keeping them up at night? What what's making them so that they're not enjoying their time with their kids and their mind is still on their work? Someone who uses AI is going to be the person that that takes your job. So I'd say staying stagnant is the biggest mistake.
Christian Klepp 00:27
Modern B2B marketing starts with curiosity. To succeed and be ahead of the competition, marketing teams must be able to navigate a rapidly evolving market research landscape to make faster, smarter marketing decisions. They must lead with strategy, by being the voice of the customer and by leveraging data that really moves the needle. So, how can teams modernize market research to turn data overload into decision velocity? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers on the Mission podcast, and I'm your host Christian Klepp. Today, I'll be talking to Molly Strawn-Carreño, who will be answering this question. She's the director of brand growth at AYTM and co-host of the Curiosity Current podcast, who is passionate about helping marketers stay ahead in the evolving world of market research. Let's dive in. Okay, and away we go. Molly Strawn-Carreño, welcome to the show.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 01:15
Thank you so much, Christian. It's really great to be here with you today.
Christian Klepp 01:18
Great to be connected, Molly. And I can't believe like we we we got on like a house on fire, didn't we? Like just talking about our common cultural background on our mom's side, at least, and you know, just parenthood. And
Molly Strawn-Carreño 01:29
Yes, there were so many things for us to chat about. I think we we our prep call went a smidge long, but it it was it was wonderful to get to know you.
Christian Klepp 01:36
Yes, a smidge is probably the understatement of the year, but I'll take it, right, Molly. I'm really looking for this conversation. We are actually going to get into a very serious zone right now, right? Because we're going to unpack well, A something that you're extremely passionate about professionally, and B it's I think something that's really pertinent to marketing teams out there that are probably dabbling. I'm just going to say it lightly. Dabbling in market research, dabbling in data, and they may or may not know how to like leverage that to their advantage, right?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 02:10
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 02:10
Without further ado, let's dive into the first question, right? So, Molly, you're on a mission to help teams navigate a changing market research landscape to make faster smarketing market moves. So for this conversation, why don't we zero in on this topic and unpack from there? So bear with me. This is a mouthful. How to modernize market research to turn data overload into decision velocity? Right. It sounds really complicated, but like you know, hear us out, people. All right. So why don't we kick off the conversation with the following questions, and I'm happy to repeat them. So the first part of the question is, what is it about market research that you wish more marketing teams understood? And a follow up to that is, where do you see a lot of them struggle?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 02:56
Yeah, and it's an important point because I feel like there's a difference between what we talk about that marketers should do versus what they actually have to do in practice, you have deadlines. You have a billion different ways that the marketing team is getting hounded from all kinds of different directions. Can you promote this? Can you help this? I'm running this event, so it's easy to say in a bubble this is what marketing should be doing. And I want to acknowledge first of all that marketers have tons of things they're managing at all points, so it can be very difficult to make change conceptually outside of the execution. That being said, I think that more marketing teams. I wish that they understood that market research is essential and the essential nature of it. A lot of times we think, oh, it's just some extra thing that we need, and we'll get to it eventually. We'll get to it eventually, but it really should be the underpinning of your entire strategy, because you can't say that you're a client-obsessed organization if you don't regularly speak to your clients. If you don't regularly speak to your prospective customer base to really get what they are are all about. You can't say that definitively without conducting some kind of market research. And I think the second part of that was where do you where do I see most marketing teams struggle? I think that a lot of times there's a few ways that decisions get done on marketing teams, the sometimes the most experienced executives or the CMO say, "This is how it's going to be. This is my gut check. This is where I feel that the industry is at. And oftentimes, it could be one singular point, and it doesn't really matter how experienced that one singular point is. When we look at market research, when we look at data, we want lots of different data points, so there still could be flaws. There still could be biases, even if it is the most experienced person in the room. I see marketing teams do A/B testing. They'll send two different types of emails and determine which one works better, but it doesn't actually translate to a long-term strategy. So they might be doing some of the efforts of market research, but. Not honing that into a really decision data backed strategy that they could rely on, and they're just doing it to check a box. They're just doing it to do it. That being said, there's also centers of excellence that are changing, and we're gonna. I know we're gonna get into this a bit later in the conversation, but sometimes marketers, in the traditional way that research has been done. If you are fortunate to work at a larger organization that has an insights team or a research team where this is their entire job function, oftentimes marketing teams will go to them and say, "This is the question that I want answered. The team will say, "Great, and they'll spit back out a pretty deck that then marketing can use or not use, or use part of, and ignore the rest of. But the challenge with that is that marketers then don't know how those answers are being generated, which can be really difficult now when marketers are being asked, "Hey, could you run our brand tracker? Hey, could you do a sophisticated ad test? Hey, can you do some package testing? I really want to see if the red package or the blue package is going to perform better at shelf. You won't know the ways to do that if you've only relied on other people, or you've only relied on potentially marketing leaders or other department heads to make your decisions for you.
Christian Klepp 06:13
Those are some really great insights, and thanks for sharing that. You know, I wonder, Molly, why do you think a lot of people are hesitant to dive deep into market research, even marketers themselves - is it a time factor? Is it perhaps even maybe? Let's be honest. Maybe they don't have the right set of skills because analyzing data is is quite a skill. It does require a bit of experience and background to be able to do that properly, right? All of the above. Anything else I missed?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 06:45
I think it's a little bit of that. I think it's also that marketers are just - they're really busy. I am aware of that as a B2B marketer myself. Is the things that we're asked to do and the extent to which we're asked to do them is, it's constantly changing. You have so many things to keep track of. You have so many deadlines to adhere to, and it can be a real challenge to up to upskill unless you deliberately put the time in. I'm going to share a quick story, and I can't take credit for this story, but our CRO, our chief revenue officer at AYTM, had this really cool story that he he always tells at conferences, and I think that it's really pertinent to this conversation. He calls it the story about don't be like Tom. So he had a boss way back when I'm going to date myself here, but I think unfortunately I think I was like three years old. But it was when the internet got started, and he worked in sales, and he had a sales manager, and the internet was just now starting to become a thing. His clients had started asking him, "How can I get in contact with you via email? What is this World Wide Web thing? You know, I want to try out this email thing. So him and his team kept asking their manager Tom over and over, "Can we get email addresses? Can we get computers? Can we get access to this? Finally, he called a meeting. He had everybody in the room, and he said, "Okay, team, I want you to stop asking me for email addresses because I'll tell you what. He held up a phone, and it was like an old school rotary phone, and he said, "This is a tool. Then he held up a computer and like those giant big screen computers, and he said, "This is a toy. Stop playing with toys. Utilize your tools, and do your job." Obviously, that did not last. Yeah, no. And so, so unfortunately, Tom stuck to his guns, and he he didn't progress in his career, and eventually he, I think, retired into obscurity. And so, I mention this because it's definitely what we're seeing in the age of AI. And I know we're going to get more into AI, but AI is enabling marketers to do the work of research to trust that the vendors that they're using these AI tools from is robust to where they don't have to upskill. I feel as as much as they would need to, because a research profession requires a whole degree, and there's a big science behind it, and there's there's everything that I don't even fully understand. And I've been working in this industry for over 10 years, and so there's a lot to be respected there, but there's a lot with AI tools that are enabling marketers to now do this type of robust research to answer their questions, and we're going to be releasing it AYTM on the tool later this year that's actually going to be doing that for marketers as well. And so I fully feel that it's not AI that's going to be taking marketers' jobs. Marketers and human beings are always going to be essential. I'm going to probably repeat this later on in the conversation, also. But we're not selling to AI robots, right? We're selling to people. At the end of the day, we need to create messages and brands that resonate with human beings, and you can enable that with AI. You can gather data via AI, you can connect with potential customer needs or what the market is was trending on, or and what's trending in any switch day from AI. But you can't have it do your job. So AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows how to use AI is going to take your job. And so that's where I think you know there's a there's a big background. That was probably a long-winded way of answering your question, but there's there's probably a big background in terms of what's preventing marketers from from upskilling and what makes it challenging to set aside time for that.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 10:33
But when it comes to doing market research, we're seeing that that is absolutely going to be a skill that marketers are going to have to take on, or is going to have to take on as part of their function, or the center of excellence for insights is going to start living with marketing teams. And again, you don't have to exactly know how the sausage is made, but you have to know the concepts and how to utilize the tools available to you to add that to your stack.
Christian Klepp 10:58
Absolutely, absolutely. You don't have to know how the sausage is made, but you have to know where the sausage is going, right? And how
Molly Strawn-Carreño 11:05
And how to get a really nice, juicy sausage that's actually going to resonate with your your customers.
Christian Klepp 11:13
Absolutely, absolutely. And on the topic of mistakes, that's a great segue to the next question. So, in terms of like modernizing market research, what are some of these key pitfalls that you think marketing teams should be avoiding, and what should they be doing instead?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 11:27
I would say for the the big errors that marketing teams make is all of the above, and just always being aware of the times, always looking and seeing what new things are coming out. I'd say again, someone who uses AI is going to be the person that that takes your job. So I'd say saying stagnant is the biggest mistake. I know that oftentimes there's a disconnect between what marketing is saying and what businesses are actually doing, and I recognize that you can't necessarily market being forward thinking and all these new changes that are being made unless your business is moving in that direction. But I would say being as forward thinking as you can, being as forward thinking about bringing new things to the table, bringing new methods to the table, because if you're not staying current with methods, if you're not staying current in how you can stay ahead, how you can become indispensable, you know, you definitely want to make a case to your team that you are essential as a marketer. That no, your job cannot just be done with AI. No, you can't just spit me out this nice graphic and put it on LinkedIn. Like the the function of marketing. If somebody tells you, "Oh, this could just be done by AI, you're not doing your job well enough. And I think that that could be a common pitfall, especially today, is ensuring that you are making yourself indispensable, but you are also aware of the things that are changing, so that you could say, "I completely understand where you're coming from. However, this is how I'm utilizing AI, so you're you're getting more bang for your buck with me. But here's why you still need a human involved in that process.
Christian Klepp 13:09
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen LinkedIn posts saying you don't need a marketing team; you can build all of that in Claude.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 13:18
Yeah, and I mean, there's I I would say for lean lean startups, AI is huge for getting those initial brainstorming things done with marketers. I don't want to. I don't want to undercut the the ways in which it's improved journeys for solopreneurs and and founders that that might not be able to afford a dedicated or even a consultative marketing hire. I get that, but if you're a big B2B brand, if you're a big name, you should not have a marketing team of AI agents. At least, at the very least, not right now. We're not there yet.
Christian Klepp 13:53
No, no, no, no. We are not.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 13:55
I don't think we ever will be. But maybe that's I don't know bias because I'm a marketer too.
Christian Klepp 13:59
Yeah, no. I mean, there's a part of me that hopes AI will never get there, right? Yeah, that there will there will be that gap, right?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 14:09
I mean, humans, and I say this with the most curiosity and admiration for human beings. We are weird creatures. I don't think that anybody could have predicted that a worldwide pandemic would cause people to hoard refined beans and toilet paper. To me there's no model that can do that. And so as much as there's every possible information data point out there about human beings, AI in the way that it's built will always be historical. It will always be looking backwards, and sure, it can try to predict trends. I mean, that's what marketers try to do a lot too, is predict trends and figure out where attention is going. But it will never be a perfect science because humans are bizarre, and we do off-the-wall things when we're presented with off-the-wall challenges, and that's never going to change.
Christian Klepp 15:00
Absolutely, absolutely. In your experience, Molly, what you believe the best B2B brands have in common, and why do you think their data isn't enough? That's something we talked about in our previous conversation, I believe.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 15:14
Yeah, and this goes back to what I said earlier about that sometimes if you do do some research, like an A/B test, or this word resonated or this color resonated. It's an individual data point, but it doesn't translate to a strategy. And I think that there's a couple things that make really good brands, and they're all undercut by intentionality in data. So customer centricity, I think, is a really important one, backed by that data. What is actually the struggles that's going on for your customer right now, or your ideal persona? Like, especially with all the AI things going on right now, what are they afraid of? What are the changes? What are the things that are keeping them up at night? What what's making them so that they're not enjoying their time with their kids and their mind is still on on their work? Because at the end of the day, that's what they're looking to be solved. Whether that's they're looking for it intentionally, or they're passively have that in the back of their mind as they're going through their day to day. And you're not going to know unless you ask them. It's actually quite that at the end of the day, it's that simple. You're asking their opinion of things, and it's not about your brand. It's not about what you're selling. It's not will you buy this and for what price point that day is important, but what is actually going on with you, and that is how you can start to develop those customer obsessed mindsets that a lot of brands strive for. And I think the other one is building a brand very intentionally. You need to understand as a B2B marketer through and through who your brand is and what you stand for, because that is what's going to enable you to go out and make choices of we're going to lean into this, we're going to stay away from this, we're going to work on this, and we're going to move away from this, ultimately every business wants to make money, but how you go about that is what's super super important. And again, you can't do that without the data necessary. So if you're sent with a problem to say our database is unengaged, our database doesn't actually care about the emails that we send. Okay, well why? Why, is it? What about your brand is not resonating with them in that moment? And again, this goes back to asking them: What are their pain points? What are their struggles? What are they having a hard time with? What do they want to do differently? What is working for them? What is not working for them? And you can ask too. You can ask your customers. I absolutely believe too that you should have, as a marketer, a champion group cohort of customers that you can tag for things that you need, including feedback, including feedback on how your brand is performing in the market, or if they use other vendors and use other companies for other things, especially in the SaaS space. There's lots of overlap. There's lots of different co competitors, collaborators that work together. What are they doing different that we're not? Just constantly having that pulse. If you're sitting in your marketing ivory tower, your marketing, even if it's not today, it's it's going. Even if it's not today that you're facing issues with resonating in the marketplace, you will, because you can't do all the work up here and not understand what's going on in the world around you. So, me, I spend a lot of my time listening to sales calls, working with our sales team, talking to clients, engaging with them at conferences. I do a lot of traveling where I ask around, I ask people, "Well, have you heard about us? You know, just doing this sort of asking, and it's so second nature in a lot of my work that sometimes I don't even realize it. But that is, I'd say, super, super essential. And I wish that more B2B brands were doing that for themselves.
Christian Klepp 18:58
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, like you know, to your point about the ivory towers, I mean, if marketers continue to do that, then they're gonna like keep producing. I'm just gonna say deliverables that are very well. They're gonna be like from an inside out perspective,
Molly Strawn-Carreño 19:14
Right.
Christian Klepp 19:15
Which is not gonna be super helpful.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 19:16
It it's gonna be helpful for you to tick a box to say that this is done.
Christian Klepp 19:21
The internal high five is what I call it, right?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 19:23
Exactly, exactly. And then it's not it's not going to resonate with your customers, and it's not going to circulate it. It's not going to be helpful. And the the issue too with a lot of those things is that you degrade your trust and your credibility. So every time you send a worksheet that is like or some sort of cut sheet that's wildly out of touch, you get people being like, "Well, they don't even get it. How am I supposed to give them my business and help them solve this issue for me if they can't if they can't even send a sheet that works for me, you know? And so we're at the front lines. We're at the front lines here of not only how do customers perceive us, but how does your how does your Total addressable market perceive you as do they perceive you as a thought leader as as an industry leader as as working forward on a lot of these things? If not, then it's going to make your sales team's jobs even harder. I like to always say that as a marketer, especially in the B2B space, where maybe a trending TikTok is not going to necessarily help us in the way it might for a B2C organization, but my job is to make the sales team's ice cream easier to scoop. Is what I like to say. So instead of banging against a sheet of ice in order to make the sale, maybe they're a little bit softer because they've heard of us. They they've seen us speak at an industry event. They've seen us do these different things. They've seen us create content that is actually reach that is actually resonating with them because it's grounded in truly a problem they're facing, and that, and even just to get on a sales call and say, "Oh yeah, I've heard of AYTM. You guys do good things. What are you guys about? Then I did my job.
Christian Klepp 20:54
Right, right, absolutely, absolutely. In our previous conversation, you mentioned that siloed research is killing marketing. So please explain what you meant by that. I think I know, but like for the benefit of the audience.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 21:07
Yeah. And this is going back to that ivory tower. There is a difference in research when we're thinking about this between an insights team and, as I mentioned before, a center of excellence. A center of excellence can be anywhere, and it's the not understanding research and being in that ivory tower that is making your marketing feel disconnected. So when we say siloed research, also as a term, that's also the same ways that marketers are creating stuff in their ivory tower that does not resonate at all. Research that happens without the input of the marketing teams, also is a challenge too. If you have again the privilege of having a research team at your disposal, if you are not giving inputs to what you're seeing in the market also or where you need support in a lot of your work, that can also be a challenge. Anytime there's not communication between teams, is when there there can be a really huge challenge. When I say center of excellence too for research, I think that the centers of excellence for research can live within marketing teams. Traditionally, in traditional research, you would create a survey, and you would go to a vendor, and the vendor would evaluate your survey and their survey best practices, and then they would have to find people to answer your surveys. And you would do, you look at the data quality, like the steps for research. Just a few years ago, just a few months ago, was very different and was not necessarily robust enough that marketing team, like that it wasn't robust enough when marketing teams did it. It was very surface level. You needed an insights team to do the type of research that I'm talking about. But nowadays, that's completely completely changed. There's still a requirement for that rigor, but insights teams, especially traditional research insights teams that have not adapted to AI, unfortunately, we're seeing them start to phase out. We're seeing this a lot in B2C organizations, but it's also coming for B2B organizations too. It's it's absolutely happening. If you aren't using Claude every single day or ChatGPT every single day in a lot of your work, if you have not created a project that can help you draft press releases. If you don't have a team that's helping you create creative assets that you could just templateize in any sort of these AI systems. Guys, like this absolutely is happening. It's going to start happening. If it hasn't to you already, it will and it should because it's helping us to be better and more efficient, and there's going to be even more of an ask when your team comes to you and says, "I want you to run the brand tracker. Transparently, I run AYTM's brand tracker now. I have the benefit, though, of having worked in research for a very long time, so I understand how to do it.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 23:59
But that's a skill that marketers are going to have to have to know, and I think that there's again there's tools that are going to be coming out or have been coming out that are going to be helping marketers with this. AYTM has a tool, and I could send you more information after if we want to link it to the podcast. But...
Christian Klepp 24:17
Sure,
Molly Strawn-Carreño 24:18
We have a product that's going to be coming out specifically for marketers called the Bridge. That's going to be coming out in October of this year. So keep an eye out for it. But it's meant to do exactly this. It's meant to warehouse data in an easy to access place. It's also a place where directly in the system marketers have access to robust survey builders, where they can just say what they need. It will automatically build the survey and run it all for you, and this is an advancement of our already existing platform Skipper, which marketers can still use. There is a bit more of an upskilling necessary there, but we have lots of academy courses about it too. But basically, you can say, "Hey, Skipper, I I want to run a survey about... In IT decision makers who make choices about financial software, and these are the types of things that I want to know. What are their pain points? What are they looking for? And here's how I want to capture it", and it'll create a survey for you, and then you can go ahead and field that with your ideal audience. And we also just came out with two a reports feature where it just creates all the reports for you, which is really really cool, and I bring all of these up not necessarily as a sales pitch, but to be aware of the things that are out there, so that when your ultimately your VPs, your CMOs come to you and say, "We need to be doing research, or even then proactively, you saying, "Hey, I can take on these aspects of research, or "Hey, I want to do a bit more research on our brand. I want to gather how how everybody is feeling about our brand in our in our total addressable market space. You could say this is how I'm going to do it, and you can feel confident in that. AYTM is a great resource, but there's also great resources in the insights industry as well. There's lots of other tools to do similar things. Obviously, I buy some of the AYTM does it the best, but in that way, then the research is integrated into everything you do.
Christian Klepp 26:05
No, absolutely, absolutely. We've spoken quite a bit about AI already. I almost feel like we're we're getting to the point now where I'm like, oh gosh, she's already answered that question. But I did have I did have one one as a follow up, just almost almost like recapping everything that you've mentioned regarding AI and market research. If there is somebody out there that's listening to this interview who's probably part of one of these insights teams that has to migrate at least a a portion of their work onto AI, and they're still struggling with wrapping their heads around using Claude or Perplexity and etc. What what advice would you give them?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 26:46
I would say simply, and this is going to be a very simple answer to a complex question: is just learn how to do it. I firmly believe though that, like I said earlier, marketers are not creating content for for an AI bot. So the way that the AI bot, it doesn't matter how good you've trained it or what projects that you've created for it. It's still going to spit out content that needs human refinement and it needs human judgment. So AI as it exists is streamlining workflows. It's making drafting easier. It can come up with certain assets easier, but it's not replacing you. It's not. It can't be as intricate, and it can't capture the nuances of of human behavior. So if you're feeling very overwhelmed by AI, and you're feeling like I swear I don't want to hear one more thing about a marketer talking about AI because it can be super overwhelming, and I'm like that personally. My husband works in sales, but he's also a genius when it comes to all kinds of AI things. And so he's always like, "Hey, I created this AI thing for us to look at potential houses to live in." And I was like, I swear, and I was like, "I don't, I don't like this part of it." He goes, "Well, there's also a feature here where you could just type in your request about changes", and I like I don't want to type in the request. I want to tell you, and he's like, well, if you tell me, it's not going to tell the agent, and the agent is going to make the change. And I was like, I want to just can I just have a cup of coffee with a human being? So I get the AI fatigue. I absolutely get it. It can be difficult, and it can also feel kind of like demoralizing. I spent a vast majority of my career creating content and working on SEO strategy and writing articles and writing press releases, and writing blogs, and those things just aren't going to exist. But I'll caveat they won't exist in the way that it's been done in the past. But I still do all those things. But I do all those things in a fraction of the time, because I have AI help me draft it, but I still put my spin on it. I still say, "This isn't how you write a press release, Claude. What are you on? Like, there's still ways that I'm changing things. So that's what I would say. I would say, learn it. Be kind to yourself. Understand that AI fatigue is absolutely a normal thing to feel. It's normal to feel overwhelmed. It's normal to feel scared. Change is scary, especially for a world where we have felt so confident and sure in a lot of marketing best practices, and those are being like flip flop. Like now, people are asking things about artificial engine optimization and how are you creating SEO in the way that now AI and large language models can scan and feed as a result, because there's no click; it's native information into the platform. And how do you ensure that you are served? Great question. I don't think that marketers have solved it yet. So there's lots of new problems to throw yourself at, and I would say know it, but be kind to yourself. Take breaks, but it's something that you should absolutely know. Don't be like Tom. If you stick your hand in and you're like, nope, AI is fun and games, and it's going to tell me what resort I should go to, but it is not for my B2B marketing work.
Christian Klepp 30:01
This is not a toy.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 30:03
This is not a toy. This is absolutely a tool that, again, if you have not been told to use yet, or have not been told how to use it yet, you will. You will ultimately.
Christian Klepp 30:16
Absolutely, absolutely. That's great advice. And on a topic of great advice, now in the interest of time, the final question: If we were going to distill it down to 3 action items, okay, that marketers can do to like modernize market research and to turn this data overload into decision velocity, what are those those 3 things that you would advise marketing teams to do.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 30:41
Okay, I would first off I would take a look at all of your existing work and think: Is there an application for AI in all this work? I would also take into consideration all the data that you do have and think How can I find potentially a vendor, a tool, or make something myself that can make this data more useful to me, because a lot of times we'll have tons of data. We'll say this works better here, and this messaging doesn't work, and this and this, and it might live across a variety of teams. Figure out how you're going to consolidate that to make that useful, because that is what AI is best at. So look across your work, see what's going to work best. The second thing I would say would be be intentional about your upskilling, and learn AI. Learn AI, not just to streamline your jobs, but learn about the all the other additional things that you're going to be taking on because businesses are now seeing what AI is enabling marketers to truly do, I'm in here talking about research this whole time, but there's a lot of other things that are that are going to be something that marketers are now being handed to do that's enabled through AI, and so I would say upskill in those areas and understand what's available to you. Be rigorous if you do bring in a vendor. Be rigorous in asking them questions. Ensure that they're going to be there for you during setup. That they're not just going to leave you alone. Make sure that this is actually going to answer what you need, because the last thing marketing budgets need is just more tools added to the budget, just for those to get cut later on. So we've...
Christian Klepp 32:14
And burning a big hole in your budget too, right?
Molly Strawn-Carreño 32:18
Right, and not having any sort of way to actually measure and track the results of that, and to actually showcase how this is definitively helping. So I would say definitely do that, and do a better job of understanding research and continuing that customer obsession mindset by asking questions through your research, and I would say the last thing to do is just continue to be curious. Marketers don't have all the answers; nobody has it. But what's fascinating about our role, and as it continues to change, and this is not just through AI. This is not just through research. This is fundamental. Marketers should always be looking on how to improve, marketers should always be ahead of change or understanding where that change is coming from, so that it can be capitalized on. And you find that in different places. You find that from your sales team, who's right there asking those customers and those prospects questions every single day. They're getting that feedback. Ask them. I'm sure, I know that sometimes marketing and sales teams don't get along, and I know that there's a billion reasons as to why. But
Christian Klepp 33:25
No. Surely not.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 33:27
I can go on and on about that. I said my husband worked in sales, so I'm I'm a little bit potentially biased about bridging the gap here. But ask them if your calls are recorded. Look at them. Start pulling all the places where your data is. Pull engagement metrics from wherever you send out your emails. Pull effectiveness dashboards. Pull all these different things from everywhere, and find ways to add those into different AI tools. Whether it's AYTM, whether it's an under research tool, or whether that's just another type of data warehousing tool, have all of those things in so that you could pull from that. So make sure that data is working for you. So that would be that would be my my 3 takeaways, and and just making sure that you're staying ahead with everything, that you're being resourceful, and that you're being you're being useful, you're being a good marketer, you're rolling with the times, you're accepting the change because if you don't, that's when you're potentially at risk. A lot of people say, like, "Oh, I'm going to lose my job because of AI", or "I'm going to lose my job because of the internet", or "I'm going to lose my job because of all these things." Change always happens. Continue to be indispensable by being the person who's knowledgeable about all these things and about where they're going.
Christian Klepp 34:34
Well, and continuously, like to your point, continuously evolve and adapt to this changing environment, right? Because it's it's almost like you have to treat it like an organism, right? It yeah, it continuously grows.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 34:45
Absolutely, and I will plug a couple of market research nonprofit organizations that have been really beneficial for me in my growth, my networking. Also, they have plenty of implementation guides and understanding and and courses about research. That's SMR. They're E S M O R. No, I spelled that wrong.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 35:05
E S O M A R.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 35:07
There you go. There you go. I'm I'm very bad at spelling. ESOMAR. They're a really fantastic global body that governs the research space. So they have AI implementation guides. They have ethics reports. They have all kinds of interesting things as you're diving into research. I would also plug Insights Association. They're a U.S.-based organization with local chapter memberships. They have conferences that happen all the time. You should absolutely check them out. They also do a really good legal newsletter about implications that are happening on the legal side of market research really interesting now when they're talking about compliance as related to AI and what data is allowed in AI tools and not. Quirks Media and Green Book they're different organizations that do a lot of different conferences. There's Women in Research they're specifically for developing young female talent in the market research space really excellent group as well that I've I've had the privilege of being a part of, and so there's lots of resources out there. Also, AYTM if you want to check us out at aytm.com, we have lots of things, not just our really cool survey platforms, but we also have courses available. We just relaunched our learning academy, and so it's called Lighthouse Academy. If you go to the website and direct to Lighthouse Academy, we have all kinds of courses from very entry-level types of research to very sophisticated types of research testing, and it's it's agnostic to the platform. So it's not about the AYTM platform; it's about different types of research and research tools. And so, if that's absolutely something that you should should and want to be diving into, there's tons of places in the research space. And then I'm also available too. I'll plug myself. Also, you can find me on LinkedIn. Also, reach out to me at Molly@AYTM.com and marketer to marketer. I'm happy to help you out where I can.
Christian Klepp 35:07
Fantastic, fantastic, and thank you so much for this. This has been such a great conversation, and you know, thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 37:08
Thanks so much for having me, Christian. I've really enjoyed our time.
Christian Klepp 37:11
All right, take care. Stay safe, and talk to you soon.
Molly Strawn-Carreño 37:14
Talk to you soon, Christian. All right. All right.
Christian Klepp 37:15
Thanks, Molly. Bye for now.