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Marketing is eating the world.

Wrapping up the sales vs. marketing roadshow with one final podcast (maybe (for now)). This time it's Marketing Against The Grain. The spicy take from the show is above, but let's look at what else they got into.

Here are the quick hits:

  • AI is a platform shift
  • Software gets easier to create and therefore commoditized
  • Marketing matters (see: Liquid Death)
  • Marketers are creators, creators disrupt brand
  • All creators are marketing first
  • Marketing will take over more of the customer journey / experience (powered by AI)
  • The marketers are the automators
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“Marketing is going to become the most important function in growing a business.”

Let's pull a few quotes (or paraphrases) to dive deeper on some of those bullet points.

About AI:

AI will lead to the ecommercization of most businesses.

The distinction between B2B and B2C will blur and disappear. It's about B2P now: Business to Purchaser.

About commodotization:

As commoditization increases (accelerated by AI), marketing becomes more important.
You differentiate on brand, message, and value messaging instead of core product.
Marketing will take over more of the customer experience.

On the creators bit:

The creator playbook is the future of marketing (they don’t have the same concerns as a public business and can have a schtick).

And, oh yeah, sales and marketing are the same thing:

The marketer doesn’t need to stop at ‘oh, I hand over the lead to sales.’ They can automate the sales outreach. Marketer goes all the way up now to transaction. But they don’t need to stop there. A lot of the support function* can be automated.

But how does this impact the org chart?

Marketing is owning all the one-to-many work. The other teams own specialized, human-work processes.
One functional group leads the one-to-many experiences. One group leads the one-to-one.

It's not sales or marketing. It's sales and marketing.

Consumers don't get to a point in their journey and have to make a choose-your-own-adventure decision between the two. Their journey should be seamless. Structure your processes accordingly.

* Everything is customer service. Starting with this core belief creates the best marketing.