The New Rules of Marketing & PR: Navigating AI and Human Connection – David Meerman Scott, Bestselling Author and Entrepreneur

Podcast Episode: The New Rules of Marketing & PR: AI and Human Connection with David Meerman Scott

Marketing visionary David Meerman Scott returns to share his cutting-edge insights. He focuses on the evolving digital marketing landscape. David recounts his journey. He went from being dismissed for innovative ideas to becoming a global thought leader.

He explores the immense growth in online engagement that shaped today’s marketing world. With AI, social media, and video now at the forefront, David stresses a crucial point. He highlights the importance of keeping human connection in marketing alive in our digital interactions.

Storytelling for Genuine Audience Bonds

Storytelling emerges as a powerful tool in marketing. We discuss how businesses can form genuine bonds with their audiences. This is achieved through impactful content. Drawing on examples like Hagerty Insurance’s success with classic car enthusiasts, we highlight a common struggle. Many companies cling to outdated strategies.

AI’s role in content creation is explored. It showcases how AI has transformed tasks like transcription and editing. This allows for efficient production of diverse content. Crucially, it does so without compromising on quality.

Streamlining Content Creation & Building Authority with AI

We dive into modern tools that streamline content creation. These tools help eradicate the “no time” excuse. Leveraging AI models and transcription services, creating high-quality content for web and social media is now faster than ever. We emphasize establishing authority through consistent content production.

This is vital as AI-based search tools gain traction. The episode wraps up with niche content strategies. These reveal how specific themes can capture media interest. They also unlock unique opportunities amidst rapid technological advancements.

Meet Our Guest: David Meerman Scott, Bestselling Author and Entrepreneur

David Meerman Scott identified the real-time marketing revolution in its infancy. He authored five books about it. These include The New Rules of Marketing and PR, now in its 8th edition. This book has sold over 425,000 copies in English. It is also available in 29 languages, from Albanian to Vietnamese.

Now, David asserts the pendulum has swung too far. It leans too heavily towards superficial online communications. Tech-weary and bot-wary people are hungry for true human connection. Organizations, he explains, can win by developing what David calls a “Fanocracy.” This concept is the subject of his Wall Street Journal bestseller. It taps into the mindset that relationships with customers are more important than the products sold to them.

Beyond his professional life, David is a massive live music fan. He has attended 984 live shows since he was 15, also passionate about the Apollo lunar program. He loves to surf but admits he isn’t very good at it.

Key Takeaways You’ll Learn:

> The evolving digital marketing landscape and the impact of AI, social media, and video.

> The critical importance of maintaining human connection in marketing amidst digital interactions.

> How storytelling and impactful content build genuine audience bonds.

> Strategies for leveraging AI in content creation for efficiency and quality.

> Methods for streamlining content production and establishing authority online.

> Insights into niche content strategies and adapting to technological advancements in marketing.

0:01
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith.

0:09
Talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack.

0:13
Listen to find out how the best of the best achieved success with their team and CRM technology.

0:20
And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.

0:26
Welcome to sales lead dog.

0:28
I’m really excited for today’s episode.

0:30
We have a returning guest to sales lead dog, David Mirman.

0:35
Scott.

0:35
David, nice to see you again, Chris, so good to be back on.

0:39
Thanks for having me.

0:41
So David, for those of you who may not know who he is, is a very, very well known author, speaker and just thought leader in our world.

0:52
And that’s why I’m very excited to have him here on Sales Lead to talk about his latest book, The new Rules of marketing, NPR, how to use content marketing, AI, social media, podcast and video and news jacking to reach buyers directly.

1:10
And I think it, it’s very, very topical.

1:13
Very.

1:14
This is something, if you’re a sales leader, you better be thinking about this in terms of how to engage your audience and Dr.

1:22
revenue for your business.

1:23
David, tell me the story behind the book in how this all started for you.

1:30
Yeah.

1:30
So I was working as a vice president of marketing for several, several different publicly traded companies, technology businesses in the late 90s, early 2000s.

1:41
And in 2002 I was fired.

1:45
I was sacked because the company I was working for thought my ideas were too radical.

1:51
So I started to write and speak about what I saw as as the best ways to do marketing, which was digital marketing, specifically creating content.

2:03
And that was pre social media, pre real time online content.

2:08
So it was really about creating great websites and e-mail newsletters and early search engine optimization techniques.

2:17
Blogging had just started.

2:19
So I talked about all those things and then I started to write what became the new roles of marketing.

2:25
And PRI started to write back in around 2005 or so.

2:30
And this was pre Twitter.

2:33
Facebook was only for students, you know, it was early, early.

2:36
And, and that book, the 1st edition came out in June 2007, which also happened to be the same month that the iPhone 1 was released.

2:47
And I, I hit timing pretty well because it quickly became the number one marketing and PR book in the entire world.

2:54
It’s now in 29 languages and we are releasing the 9th edition in the summer of 24, which is super exciting.

3:04
9 editions.

3:05
I can’t, I can’t even imagine when the book is sold about a half million copies over the various editions.

3:12
So it’s super gratifying that something that I invented way back when that people didn’t really think was all that interesting.

3:22
I even got fired for it has had such an impact on so many people.

3:27
It’s used in hundreds of universities, thousands of companies as the go to marketing guide and and I’m excited to have had that propel me to be able to speak in 46 countries and be able to advise some of the most interesting companies in the world.

3:46
I’ve been an advisor to HubSpot since 2717 years now, still on on on their board of advisors.

3:52
So things like that are super exciting.

3:55
It’s super exciting.

3:56
I mean, it’s crazy to when you, you know, go back in time like that, like you’re saying to the beginning of all of this and how much, you know, that that’s become the core.

4:07
But this whole topic of how do I engage my prospects and my customers digitally, it’s just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.

4:14
It’s just, it’s huge, huge now.

4:16
Yeah, absolutely.

4:17
And and the number of people online went from a, you know, 10 or 20 million.

4:23
When I first started doing it around the time the book came out, it was a couple 100 million people in the world.

4:28
Now it’s practically every human has access to online content.

4:34
In some third world countries it’s via mobile phone.

4:36
But yeah, it’s super exciting to have experienced the transition from basic websites to real time websites to social media now to AI video, audio.

4:49
You know, we have, Can you imagine thinking back to 2007 when the first book, the the 1st edition of the book came out that we would be doing what we’re doing right now, which is a real time video discussion that we can then push out onto the web so that anyone in the world can see it.

5:07
Or even if you were to use the technology, could see it live.

5:10
That’s, that’s like the Jetsons.

5:13
It is.

5:13
It’s insane because that’s exactly, I mean, back then just doing a video call, I remember trying to do video calls.

5:20
It was horrible.

5:21
I mean, you wanted it to work, but you know, the technology, the bandwidth, none of that really was ready for it.

5:28
Now you’re kind of a dinosaur.

5:33
If you’re not doing video, if you’re not doing this type of stuff, you’re way behind.

5:41
Yeah, I think that’s true.

5:43
But at the same time, I’m still convinced, even more so now with artificial intelligence, that at the core of all of this is humanity.

5:57
And I think that’s something that we’ve lost in recent years in many ways that as people have embraced these tools and these strategies, embraced, you know, creating content on Instagram and TikTok.

6:13
And some of the newer platforms, embraced the use of artificial intelligence to help them to create that content.

6:20
That in some cases, that’s really veered off in the direction of, you know, artificial intelligence, artificial.

6:29
And I think we all have an opportunity to pull back a little bit and inject more humanity into what we’re doing.

6:36
Because ultimately, if we’re creating this content as a form of marketing, as a form of generating attention for our business, then it’s important to make sure that we realize that we’re reaching actual human beings, not, you know, someone who’s looking at us as a number and not someone who’s just looking for, you know, some viral dance or something, But but something that that brings back humanity.

7:04
And, and I, and I think that’s lost.

7:06
And I think that becomes the opportunity for those of us who can do it.

7:10
So how do we bridge that gap to where we have to maintain that, that connection on that personal level?

7:16
How do you bridge that gap?

7:17
Well, one way that I always talk about is most organizations fail because they spend too much time creating their content around their products and services.

7:28
And with those tools that I just talked about AI and and things like Instagram, it even becomes more so because they’re saying, oh, here’s my product, buy it.

7:37
Or you know, here’s here’s my service that Ioffer.

7:40
Reach out if you’re interested in it and people get headaches and frustrated and just click on to the next thing if the only thing you’re doing is talking about what your products and services are.

7:52
So I think and, and it’s, it’s been a fundamental important aspect of every single edition of the new roles of marketing NPR.

8:02
And even though I have to update it every couple years, we’re in the 9th edition now because of new tools and new strategies, most most recently because the huge explosion and artificial intelligence.

8:14
But over time, lots of other different tools over the 9 editions.

8:19
What hasn’t changed is the strategy is that you start with your buyers.

8:27
I call them your buyer personas, but understanding deeply the people that you’re trying to reach, understanding their problems, understanding how they describe their problems, understanding how one person’s problems might be different than another’s and and how they might articulate those differences.

8:51
That is what allows you to create the kind of content that will reach people in a fundamental way that will be really interesting to them.

9:00
And I love telling stories in the book and on the speaking circuit.

9:04
I tell stories on my blog.

9:05
I tell stories and one of the the cornerstone stories in the new rules of marketing and PRI just love is Haggerty Insurance.

9:13
So Haggerty is a a company that provides classic car auto insurance.

9:18
And when I ask people from the stage, raise your hand if you love auto insurance, there are no hands that go up Everyone hates auto insurance.

9:27
You don’t like to spend money on it.

9:28
It’s expensive furthermore, or you never want to use the product because it means you crashed your car.

9:35
But but what Haggerty does is they have a ton of great content, a wonderful YouTube channel now, because they insure classic cars, They know pricing of different models of classic cars going back 100 years.

9:50
They provide that content for free.

9:52
If you want to know how much, I have a 1973 Land Rover Series Three.

9:56
If I want to know what the value of that, I can go on Haggerty and find out.

10:00
They have a driver’s club.

10:02
They go to physical events where people who love cars congregate.

10:07
And as such, they’ve become the number one source of information on classic cars in the world, but also by by by virtue of doing that, have become the number one insurance company that insures classic cars in the world.

10:23
And and that’s what I mean by humanity.

10:25
It’s not just buy my insurance product.

10:28
It’s, it’s creating content, creating a human approach to reaching people, in this case classic car collectors.

10:36
And they’re helping people.

10:38
You know, it’s not, hey, I’m not just trying to sell, you know, I’m going to give you something of value that’s going to help you.

10:43
And oh, hey, by the way, we also sell insurance.

10:45
So if you need it, let us know.

10:47
But I mean, think about all the content they can create by those involvements they have at the community level and things that people are really going to be willing to engage with versus an insurance commercial, you know, where you’re just going to tune it out 100%.

11:04
That’s exactly what the right approach is.

11:06
And not that remarkably, not that many companies do that.

11:12
And I think it’s because traditional marketing education, like at the NBA level or even in the undergraduate level has, is still focused on the four PS.

11:23
It’s focused on on how you talk about your products and services and the way people learn on the job is typically around how are we going to promote our product?

11:34
How are we going to advertise our product?

11:36
How are we going to get people interested in our product?

11:39
You know, this is the sales lead dog podcast.

11:41
How are we going to generate sales leads for our products and services?

11:45
Well, it’s not by talking about your products and services for the most part.

11:48
So, so I think that that what most people fail around is that fundamental strategic understanding before you even create any content.

12:02
And if you are doing that, you’ve got a head start in front of in front of most other people who are who you might be competing with.

12:10
And even if you’re not competing with them because you’re a similar company, you’re competing for their attention because we only have so much attention to deliver.

12:19
Yeah.

12:20
It’s the story behind Sales Lead Dog.

12:22
I started this podcast because I looked at my competition.

12:25
No one was doing a podcast like this.

12:31
And I’m not selling CRM on these episodes.

12:35
I’m talking about real problems, real issues that people need help with and, and talking to experts that can share their experiences, their wisdom in the hopes that maybe they can help some people.

12:46
And, and then it creates a huge amount of content for us because every podcast we do not only with the video, we can take snippets from the videos that we post on social media, blog posts, the transcript.

12:59
There’s, I think we counted up like 11 different ways that we can produce content out of one episode, right.

13:07
And getting back to artificial intelligence, that AI is a great way.

13:11
I’m sure you’re doing this to create those snippets.

13:14
I mean, it used to be even just a few years ago.

13:17
Oh my God, I have to manually create that transcript and then I have to manually read it and look for the good bits that can be turned into tweets.

13:26
And I have to manually go in and take the one hour video and manually edit it into, you know, 32nd posts for short form social media.

13:40
But now there’s AI tools that can do almost all of those things so that you’re essentially just pushing buttons.

13:47
Now you still need to review it to make sure they’re accurate, but wow, is it easier than it was even just a couple of years ago.

13:53
Oh, I can, I’m a testament to that.

13:55
It’s we used to spend upwards of eight hours to produce, you know, approximately 35 minute episode with all the work that we had to do around the transcript and all that.

14:06
Now with AI, that’s cut it down to including the time we spend editing and actually uploading that stuff, which we really can’t get around.

14:17
We’ve cut at least six hours out of that time.

14:20
It’s amazing, amazing, absolutely amazing.

14:24
And, you know, as as ubiquitous as you and I think these artificial intelligence tools are when I’m out in the wild, talking to marketers, talking to CE OS, talking to entrepreneurs, that there are not that many people using AI in that way.

14:41
And people will often say to me, you know, I’m too busy to create content.

14:45
I’m, I’m not a good writer.

14:48
So I don’t have a great website because I’m not a great white writer.

14:51
And I say, hey, you know, you’ve got these AI tools, you know, subscribe to some of them, very small money, some of them are free.

15:00
And I, I, I have this workflow that I always suggest to people, which is, OK, you’re not a great writer.

15:06
OK, you don’t have a lot of time.

15:07
Here’s what you do either Record an interview with somebody, even just on your iPhone, whatever it is, I record your record.

15:15
An interview doesn’t even have to be video, but just create an audio piece of audio.

15:21
Run that through a transcription engines.

15:23
I, I use auto AI, but there’s tons of them.

15:26
Get your transcript.

15:28
Then take the transcript and run it through either Chachi, PT or some other large language model and ask for a summary.

15:35
Then you’ve got a summary which you can then edit that becomes either a web page or a blog post.

15:39
Then you take that summary and say please create a compelling headline, create metadata, create search engine optimized keywords and phrases again from Chachi, BT or whatever LLM you use.

15:53
Then take it and run it through.

15:55
I, I happen to use lately, but use a tool that creates short form content from long form content.

16:03
That whole process you said, you know, maybe it takes you an hour and a half.

16:07
That whole process, you can end up with a web page, A blog post, if you had recorded it as video, audio, it could be a podcast, it could be a YouTube video.

16:17
And then you’ve got social posts for LinkedIn, you’ve got social posts for Twitter, Instagram, other places, that whole process under an hour in some cases.

16:26
And people, people will continually say, I don’t have the time to create content.

16:30
Sure you do using some of the tools that are available to us.

16:34
Exactly.

16:35
And that’s the thing, it’s like I’ve realized a long time ago, I’m not the best writer, but I’m a great editor, a very good, there you go.

16:41
And so using these tools to do the heavy lifting for me.

16:46
So then I can focus on what I am good at, get that done very quickly.

16:50
What you said spot on.

16:53
It.

16:53
It is so much easier.

16:56
And those excuses just aren’t valid anymore.

16:59
If I don’t have time, it’s just not valid.

17:02
Yeah.

17:02
Yeah, I think that’s right.

17:03
And, and, and so rather than spending a lot of money to generate attention, whether that’s by buying ads or buying trade show booth space or whatever it is, you know, hiring a team of salespeople, whatever it might be.

17:20
And if that’s working for you, great.

17:22
I’m not saying don’t do it, but for a lot of companies at that sort of approach doesn’t work so great anymore.

17:27
You know, focus on trying to generate attention from people in these ways and you’re building an asset that never goes away.

17:34
I mean, I’m I’m dumbfounded when I look at my Google Analytics to see that blog posts I wrote 20 years ago are still providing people the opportunity to find my website.

17:50
I can’t even imagine a blog post I wrote 20 years ago still generating inbound people to my to my website and some of them filling out a form and wanting to ask me a question or, or or whatever it might be.

18:04
That’s that’s remarkable.

18:06
And if you’re doing traditional advertising, soon as you stop the advertising, your links go away.

18:11
You are not getting more people.

18:13
But if you’re creating content, every single piece of content, every episode of this podcast that you’ve created, plus all the add-ons that you’ve created for social and so on lives forever, yes, and provides value forever to you.

18:30
And that becomes increasingly important as more and more people are are maybe moving beyond a traditional search engine like Google and going to the newer ways of finding information through through hybrid AI generated engines.

18:51
I love perplexity, but there’s others where it’s not just blue links, which is traditional search engine optimization tries to be one of those blue links, but rather when someone asks a question of one of these hybrid AI generated models, you’re getting a, a couple of paragraphs of an answer.

19:13
But in the newer ones, you’re also getting the citations.

19:16
So if you’ve created, in your case, you’ve created a ton of content around sales leads.

19:21
Somebody enters a question about sales leads, bang, because you’ve created so much content, you pop up as an authority within these large language models.

19:32
And that’s in many ways even more valuable than traditional search engine optimization.

19:37
Well, I think so too.

19:38
It’s it’s, I mean, I don’t know how what other people are doing, but for me, I don’t use traditional search anymore.

19:45
I’m doing it’s all the eye based because I get better results, better content.

19:49
I’ve made context, I’m getting the citation.

19:52
So if I want to dig deeper and see, OK, what, what are they seeing that might be more expansive than what I’m seeing in the summary from AI?

20:00
It I don’t waste near as much time trying to mine the stuff myself.

20:05
Yeah, he’s doing it for me.

20:07
What what is your go to to a mine’s perplexity?

20:11
I’ve been using copilot.

20:13
OK, but I’m going to check out perplexity.

20:15
I’m not tied to anyone just yet.

20:18
I want to try just you’re just curious because it’s pretty big shake out right now in terms of what’s going on.

20:24
And and as a content creator, I’ve got 12 books when I go in and I enter a search term of something that I know, I know I’m the worldwide expert in like I’ll give you an example.

20:37
This is a book I wrote 10.

20:40
It came out 10 years ago.

20:41
It’s called marketing the moon and it’s about the marketing and public relations aspect of the Apollo lunar program or a super esoteric topic.

20:50
I’m the I’m my co-author rich.

20:53
We are the number one experts in this topic in the entire planet.

20:57
And interestingly, just a couple weeks ago, as we’re doing this recording in the summer of 2024, a book, sorry a a a full length big budget Hollywood film called Fly Me to the Moon was released starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.

21:14
And that film was based on this book.

21:19
Isn’t that crazy?

21:20
And and so if you if you you know what’s cool is a marketing book can turn it be turned into a major Hollywood movie.

21:28
But all of a sudden the whole world is paying attention to the idea of how did we market the the moon landings?

21:39
And because that’s a a fictional representation of what happened, it’s a romantic comedy.

21:46
People said, are the stories found in Fly Me to the Moon?

21:50
Are they real?

21:51
Are they based in fact?

21:53
So they go to a search engine or they go to an AI engine, they type it in and guess what they find, right?

22:01
They find me.

22:02
They find me, they find my book.

22:04
And just in the last couple weeks, I’ve been quoted in some cases I didn’t, I wasn’t even interviewed.

22:12
I was quoted from old stuff I wrote 10 years ago.

22:17
I was in USA TODAY, I was in Vanity Fair, I was in all of these publications and, and some blogs and so on.

22:25
And in some cases the film makers cited the fact that they used our books.

22:30
So that was even more so bringing us back a book we wrote 10 years ago, bringing us back into the fold.

22:37
So I’m a content creator and in one hand, I really don’t like when this kind of content like that I wrote in Marketing the Moon or some of the other books I’ve written is used without citations.

22:52
Like the the traditional early stages of ChatGPT.

22:56
All you get is the summary without the without the citations.

22:59
But now with the tools that are coming out, the citations are included.

23:03
And that’s how reporters find us, those of us who create this kind of content.

23:08
So that’s the future of these AI engines are all those citations.

23:12
And that means those of us who want to get known, to want to generate sales leads, we, what we need to do is make sure that we’re creating the kind of content that will get found in these AI engines.

23:24
One of them being a book, by the way, another one being a podcast.

23:28
Yep.

23:29
No, that’s the thing.

23:30
I mean, it’s we’re in the early days.

23:33
I mean, do you think back to when Google was getting kicked off and the result of Vista, There are all these different search engines, search engines that don’t exist anymore.

23:43
That’s actually, it’s actually really fun to remember some of those Alta, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, I mean, some of those, some of those search engines from back in the late 90s.

23:55
Hilarious.

23:56
Yeah.

23:57
And but they’re all gone.

24:00
And but the people that were really smart were the ones that dove in.

24:02
Like how can I leverage this tool, Google and some of these other tools, How can I leverage those to help drive business?

24:11
And so the people that are doing the work now to create all this content, because it is all about content instructions, your content to add value and to be authoritative doing that work.

24:22
Now as they’re building out these engines, it’s just going to continue to pay dividends because you’re saying your book was 10 years ago, 10 years ago and and it’s still paying dividends.

24:33
So that’s we have to think long term about this stuff.

24:35
It’s not just, hey, I want to drive results for this quarter or the, you know, the second-half of this year.

24:41
It’s I’m producing content for the next 10 years.

24:44
The next 20 years.

24:45
That’s right.

24:46
That’s right.

24:46
I think that’s absolutely right.

24:48
And as we said earlier, a couple minutes ago, it builds on itself and, you know, you, you, you create content that that that is like the gift that keeps on giving.

24:59
It’s a remarkable thing.

25:00
Yeah, exactly.

25:01
Exactly.

25:02
So if everyone’s doing this, everyone’s going to start doing this, how do I stand out in this new world, David?

25:10
Well, you know, people ask me that all the time.

25:12
And if you’re creating generic, very broad content, it is hard to stand out.

25:20
Like, if I wanted to create a podcast, I wouldn’t just create a podcast about marketing.

25:26
It would be a niche podcast, which is exactly what you’re doing if and in the case of writing a book, I’ll just bring this one up again because it’s on my mind because they’ve based a film on it.

25:40
But the marketing aspects of the Apollo lunar program, now that is an esoteric, very specific, very unique topic.

25:50
No one had ever written a book about it before it became very popular.

25:55
We I got the last man to walk on the moon, Jean Cernan to write the foreword to it.

26:01
It was published by MIT Press.

26:02
It did it did really well because it was a niche.

26:08
You know, some people use the term long tail piece of content.

26:12
So my recommendation is always to try to find a niche and a long tail subject that you’re an expert in.

26:24
Another one I wrote is called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

26:29
And I’ve got a Grateful Dead logos for my shoulder here.

26:32
But Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead is another example of that kind of content is yeah, I could write about marketing in general, but if I focus on an on a topic that is a little bit surprising, that is a little bit niche, like the marketing aspects of the Grateful Dead, the marketing aspects of the Apollo lunar program, then then you’ve got an opportunity to stand out.

26:56
So I always recommend to people that they try to find a way that they can create content which is much more niche than what most people are out there doing.

27:08
Yeah, Now 100% agree with that because it’s, if you’re doing whatever like you’re saying marketing, you’re vanilla, you’re not standing out, you’re just going to be lost in the noise.

27:19
But if you can find that unique perspective, that unique viewpoint, because you’re talking about marketing, but you’re giving it a context, a perspective, a very unique anchor that.

27:34
Now I want to read about it because I mean, for me personally, anyone who’s like my age, I think who, you know, it was a little kid watching those rockets being launched and people going to the moon.

27:45
And there’s an emotional connection to that that you’re tapping into, right, right.

27:51
And and one more aspect of this just this generic, this general idea of creating niche content like that, it’s way easier to get the media interested.

28:01
So those two books got more media than my other ten books combined because because you know, Rolling Stone wanted to talk about marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead, Variety wanted to talk about marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead.

28:18
We got into the the Sunday New York Times with Marketing the Moon, The Sunday New York Times.

28:26
What the hell?

28:27
You know, a regular marketing book will never make it into the Sunday New York time.

28:33
No, it’s a textbook.

28:35
It’s like, who cares?

28:36
There’s a hundred thousands of these, right?

28:39
And and the other thing that happens, which which we didn’t expect, I say we because both of those books were written with co-authors marking lessons from the Grateful Dead with Brian Halligan, Co founder of HubSpot and marking the moonlight buddy Rich Jurich.

28:55
So I say we and we, we did not expect to then have access to some remarkable opportunities just by creating that niche content.

29:06
I’ve ended up meeting every, every living member of the Grateful Dead, been backstage at shows.

29:11
Never would have happened without writing the book.

29:13
I was invited by the head of PR for NASA to spend an entire day at their Washington headquarters.

29:19
And, and we weren’t, I wasn’t told this ahead of time, but when we arrived there, it ended up being a full day with the NASA administrator, number one guy, NASA, Jim Bridenstine at the time, spent a day with him, went to his, went to his senior staff meeting.

29:35
We were advising the guy in charge of NASA on how to do marketing.

29:40
Whoa, how do you do that?

29:42
Well, you write a niche book, right.

29:46
So, you know, I, I know we’re spending a lot of time on this topic, but I, I’m just a huge, I’m a huge fan of, of, of making sure that you’re focused on a niche rather than generically focused on the broad aspects of what it is that you’re trying to do.

30:02
Not 100%.

30:03
It’s, it’s, you have to find a way to breakthrough the noise.

30:09
And because people are looking, they’re, they’re waiting for you to stand out so they can latch on and say, yeah, I’m interested in that.

30:18
But if you’re lost, you know, they’re they’re never going to see you.

30:21
You have to find a way to stand out.

30:23
Absolutely.

30:24
Yeah.

30:27
What was the hardest part about writing this new edition for you?

30:34
Always a challenge because I always want to have new stories, new stories of success.

30:41
And so I have to kick off a couple of other stories to put in the newer, the newer stories in this particular edition, I’ve got a wonderful story about I mentioned buyer personas earlier, a company called Toned Immaculate.

30:58
They’re, it’s a clothing designer based on the West Coast and his buyer persona are are people who are nostalgic for 1970’s, the 1970s California look.

31:10
They primarily do women’s clothing, but their, their website and their, the content they create and clothes they create are fabulous and I think they totally nailed this buyer persona.

31:21
I also have a story about Kolkata Chai Tea Company.

31:25
They have 4 locations in Manhattan and they do e-commerce sales as well and their online marketing is amazing.

31:34
What they learned is that Chai in this country has been bastardized by some of the really, really big coffee brands.

31:43
Starbucks, for example, who weren’t, aren’t serving real authentic style Chai.

31:49
And it started by two young Indian American brothers and they decide to bring authentic Chai to this country starting in New York City.

31:58
And the way that they do their marketing, the way that they do their social media, their Instagram, their Facebook, and really fabulously well done.

32:06
So I told that story and some other stories.

32:08
So it’s always a challenge to find great stories.

32:11
And with the artificial intelligence explosion, I wanted to add ideas around AI there.

32:18
There was an AI chapter in the 8th edition, but it obviously needed to be expanded because I wrote the 8th edition prior to the launch of Chachi PT and in the other large language models.

32:28
So I had to update it.

32:30
But I’m not I didn’t want to write a book that was all about AI.

32:34
And so the challenge was how to put some things about AI in there without making it kind of over blown and and and bloated with too much about AI.

32:46
So so that was a bit of a challenge too.

32:48
Yeah, that’s awesome.

32:50
I also had to do a search and I also had to do a search and replace Twitter for X for Twitter.

32:56
Remarkable how many references to Twitter there were in the book.

33:01
I think it was like 50 or 60, you know, and it’s like our friend Elon Musk and his name change.

33:08
I had to go in and, and make all those changes.

33:10
That’s funny.

33:10
That’s the stuff you got.

33:11
That wasn’t a, it wasn’t a challenge.

33:13
It was just just sort of a the 1st edition Twitter didn’t exist.

33:18
It wasn’t even in the book.

33:19
Then I added it and now I had to change the name to it.

33:22
So yeah, no, it’s crazy.

33:23
And that’s, it’s interesting.

33:26
I’m just thinking now when it comes time for the 10th edition, what’s going to be driving that?

33:33
What’s going to be the time, What’s going to be the big change?

33:36
Because it, the pace of change only accelerates, you know, and, and especially with the explosion of AI and the amount of money that’s being spent on it to develop these advanced capabilities.

33:49
I tell my kids, I mean, your world is going to be vastly, vastly different than mine was, you know, because of AI.

33:58
And I, and I think in most ways it’ll be better because now we’ve got these tools that, you know, fused appropriately that should make life a lot better for most of us.

34:09
I think so.

34:10
So I’m already, I’m already imagining that the AI chapter will need to be rewritten, you know, 18 months from now when I, when I work on the next edition.

34:22
But when one thing that I’ve been able to do pretty well in my life and with my books and with my speeches and with my advisory work is make fairly complex topics easy for people to understand.

34:37
A lot of the people who read my books might be marketers, but they aren’t necessarily like high end digital marketers who understand nuances of things, or they might be entrepreneurs, or they might be professional services providers, doctors, lawyers, dentists and so on.

34:56
And so I’ve always prided myself and have focused my book, my books and my speeches and so on.

35:04
And, and even as we’re having this discussion on, on taking the complex and making it easy to understand.

35:11
So what I’m imagining for this next edition is as AI becomes more ubiquitous, as AI becomes more complex, as the companies that are delivering these AI tools make them harder for the average person perhaps to understand, My job will be to make it easy for people to implement, easy for people to understand.

35:33
And, and I like that, that aspect.

35:36
You know, I like going, for example, to a cocktail party or meeting people at a conference and they say, I don’t understand this AI stuff.

35:44
It’s too complicated for me.

35:46
And I say, oh, AI super simple.

35:48
All it is is data times math.

35:50
That’s all you need to understand.

35:51
That’s what AI is.

35:53
It’s taking data, typically large sets of data and applying math to it to get an outcome.

35:59
So you take all of the Netflix data of all of the ways that people use Netflix and the things that they like and the, and the, and the films and the series that they watch.

36:11
That’s a huge data set.

36:14
You apply math to it so that when I, one person goes to Netflix and watches a year’s worth of movies and television shows, Netflix knows by its math and all of its amazing huge amounts of data what I am likely to like next.

36:32
That’s all AI is.

36:34
And people like if you see their blank, their brain explode because all of a sudden when I say IAI is just data times, math, they, they kind of get it.

36:43
And so I, I like that aspect of it.

36:46
So my challenge with every edition, the 10th edition coming up at some point will be how to take some of these complex bits of of stuff out there that people think they don’t understand and make it easy or easy enough for them to understand.

37:04
They want to deploy it in their businesses.

37:06
Yep.

37:08
You just gave a great example, David.

37:10
I was going to tell people like one of the best things I like about your books is you.

37:14
They’re very accessible for anyone.

37:17
This is not just for marketing Wizards.

37:21
It actually I think it’s the opposite.

37:23
It’s for it’s this book is these your books are all written for everybody that hey, I’m I need to understand this problem.

37:30
I may not need to become an expert in it, but I need to understand it to help guide my decisions and and the guidance of provide my team.

37:40
I think your books are a great vehicle for that.

37:42
Thank you.

37:43
Yeah, you can get the book on Amazon plus all David’s books.

37:48
I just get them all.

37:49
They’re all really good.

37:52
And David, thank you for coming on Sales Lead Dog.

37:57
It’s great seeing you again.

37:58
My pleasure, Chris, it’s good to be on again and maybe in a couple of years, next edition, we’ll do it again 100%.

38:06
So we’ll have all the links to David’s books on Amazon, plus his website [email protected]/sales Lead Dog, where you’ll get not only this episode, but all our hundred plus episodes of Sales Lead Dog.

38:21
So be sure to check that out and subscribe.

38:23
David, thanks again for coming on Sales Lead Dog.

38:26
My pleasure.

38:27
Thanks very much.

38:30
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38:38
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38:41
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38:51
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Quotes: 

“In an AI-driven world, maintaining humanity in digital interactions is more crucial than ever.” 

“Storytelling isn’t just about telling tales; it’s about forging genuine connections with your audience.” 

“The excuse of ‘no time’ for content creation is obsolete with the modern tools we have today.” 

Links:

David’s LinkedIn 

Fanocracy  

The New Rules of Marketing & PR (9th Edition)