Rethinking Marketing Strategy In An AI-Powered World

Tessa Burg: Hello, and welcome to another episode of “Leader Generation,” brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, CTO here at Mod Op, and today I am joined by Liza Adams. She’s one of Pavilion’s 50 CMOs to watch in 2024 and an AI advisor and fractional CMO. Liza, thank you so much for joining us. We’re excited to have you.

Liza Adams: Hi, Tessa! So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Tessa Burg: Oh, yeah. And I was so impressed with your insights that you shared at, it was the, let’s see, the Marketing Institute’s B2B conference, and I’ve loved following your content. So right at the start, I wanna tell our listeners and our clients that, follow Liza. Follow her on LinkedIn, great content. She’s so generous with the insights she shares. So today we’ll get into some of those great guiding points that marketers, marketing leaders can use. But thank you, right off the bat, for putting out such great content that’s inspiring, very accessible.

Liza Adams: I’m so humbled, thank you. I learned so much from so many. This era of AI is promoting sharing and lifting each other, ’cause no one is an expert. So the more we share, the more we learn from each other. The rising tide lifts all boats, so that’s what I love about the AI community.

Tessa Burg: Yes, me too. I know, I really, a lot of people are fearful about what’s coming, but in our little AI community bubble, I have met so many generous and kindhearted and people who very much lean into that ethical and responsible approach for technology to elevate.

Liza Adams: Mm-hmm.

Tessa Burg: And, you know, what we’re gonna get in today is, like, how do we use AI for strategy and building trust? And that’s critically important, and it’s an important message for people to hear as we continue.

Liza Adams: Yeah, absolutely.

Tessa Burg: So, tell us about yourself. Tell us about your background.

Liza Adams: Oh, boy, I could talk about AI and marketing all day, but, like, talking about me is not my favorite. So, yes, I am Liza Adams, it’s L-I-Z-A. I joke around and I say it’s like the leaning tower of Liza. So I’ve been in B2B tech for many decades. I’m based in Denver and also been here for over 20 years, but half of my career has been spent in Silicon Valley, working for some of the largest B2B tech companies. You know, Brocade, now part of Broadcom, Pure Storage, Juniper Networks, and then here in Denver, Level 3, now part of CenturyLink. And then I also worked with some SaaS companies. You know, Smartsheet was one of ’em. And then my last role was at Encompass Technologies, smaller, much, much smaller, but a global business. And I love purpose-driven companies. I also love elevating the strategic value of marketing, and what that really means is having such deep insights about the market and about the customer. And with those deep insights, we are able to guide the business in the right direction, so more about marketing in service of the market. So, that’s what I’m truly passionate about, and AI just happens to be one of those things that I feel is a gift to marketers because it does elevate our strategic value and it allows us to be more authentically human, and we could talk a little bit more about that.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, and I feel like that sentiment is one that’s not obvious or maybe not even shared by marketers. There’s a lot of fear in that AI will replace the knowledge and expertise of marketing rather than elevate the strategic value. So what are you seeing in your work and across your clients? What are those bright spots where AI is giving marketers an edge and more of a strategic value as we move forward?

Liza Adams: Yeah, you know, it’s so important just to take a step back and have a little bit of perspective on this, because as we look at marketers, especially the CMOs, there are only 41 marketers on Fortune 1000 boards. And less than 3% of board members have marketing experience. So, these are stats from Spencer Stuart. And, you know, I deeply looked into this because I was curious. I said, “Wow, why are we not on boards?” And there are a number of reasons why we’re not on boards, but one of the biggest reasons in my mind is that we are perceived as tacticians rather than strategists. I think the things like social posts and websites, events, ads, logos take the front seat in us being perceived, in people’s perceptions of marketing. But things like our deep understanding of the market, segmentation targeting and positioning, category creation, messaging, those types of things might be invisible, hence not as well known for others, when those are the types of things that make these campaigns shine. Unless we truly understand the markets, it’s really hard to launch a campaign that will stick in market. So, you know, and then layer on top of that this movement from growth at all costs to sustained profitability. When it was growth at all costs, the main thing there was, it was almost like a land grab, right? Like, it was, you know, go after more segments, go after more personas, more opportunities, and be okay with a higher churn because we’re trying to get as many in the door. Well, when we shifted to sustained profitability, that turned the model on its head. This now is about picking the segments. Maybe it’s top two or three segments that we know so well, that we could serve so well cost effectively, and we could have high value in those segments, and we are best in the world in serving those segments, because we don’t want them to leave. We want those to be highly profitable, and because we serve them so well, we could do it so cost effectively. So this whole notion of choosing, narrowing the aperture versus going broad is putting a lot of pressure on the business and hence marketers to elevate their thinking. Because if we don’t, if we just continue with broad marketing, you know, going after more segments, and we have this product market fit misalignment, it is literally, and then we infuse our campaigns with AI, it will accelerate and put a spotlight on this misalignment. I joke around, because I say, you know, it is like doing an all-out campaign for snowblowers in Florida when we have bad product market fit and then you infuse your campaigns with AI. So I think now with AI, we now can use it to help us figure out in what segments of the market we should go after, analyze the market, analyze all this data, and with all that capability, we will be able to pick and choose the right ones. When we do that, we understand them so well, we align the segments, right segments with our product, and then we can infuse our campaigns with AI, right? Then we can see the results of good product market fit and more efficient and better campaigning in market. So, that, you can kinda just see from that example how AI will push us to really make some strategic decisions rather than doing it the same old way that we’ve ever done it before. And I truly believe it’s almost a gift to marketers, and we should embrace it fully and flip the perceptions on its head.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I relate so well to a lot of the things that you said, ’cause I remember when I was on the client side and sitting in a marketing role, the metrics I was held accountable to during the growth at all costs were kind of insane. You know, it was like, well, how many impressions did this campaign generate? It’s like, man, impressions? A lot, but, you know, why is it so important? Why isn’t our email list growing? Why aren’t you sending out to everyone? Like, it was mind boggling when the growth at all costs was, like, at the cost of the value of our domain, at the cost of value of our sending domain. And it was like, well, it’s not how many people, how big is the list, how many times did we send, it’s what value do the client receive, how do we know they receive value. And that needs to be measured in engagement, conversion, and ultimately purchase and lifetime value. But there was-

Liza Adams: Absolutely.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, so much being prioritized on reach, reach, reach, volume, volume, volume. And it was maddening when you’re trying to be a data-driven marketer. I mean, it’s one of the things that I love working in marketing, is the data, is learning about people and seeing what their behaviors are and where is the best place to align.

Liza Adams: Yeah, there’s such a shift from, you know, we still do the MQLs and things like that, right? But now, focus is on net retention rates, you know, reduction of churn rates, lifetime value, to your point, right? Ensuring that we get more references. So, these references become a much bigger marketing megaphone for new customers because they are more valued than the companies themselves. So, I think it’s such a shift, and to the extent that we can use AI to, you know, deeply understand the customers, personalize the experience, make our content relevant, give before getting.

Tessa Burg: Right.

Liza Adams: Just being so completely human about, you know, building a relationship, earning the trust, because people’s radars are up. You know, they know about deepfakes, they know about AI’s ability to create content en masse, you know, rapidly. They can see right through that. And when we, you know, create differentiation in the market by being human, by being transparent about our use of AI, by telling stories, by infusing it with experiences, making it so relevant and so personalized that an AI search, that even Google or Perplexity or ChatGPT and Claude cannot ignore it, they would have to serve up our content. Those are the kinds of things that I think will be valued and cherished and rewarded in the era of AI.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. One of the most concerning quotes I heard in the last, I think, like four months was from Sam Altman, he said 98% of marketing will be automated. And then there was another part, and that same interviewer was like, you know, you can pretty much completely replace agencies and even marketers in general. And it was such a disservice to, one, what marketing is, to your point, it’s not just ads. Yes, you can automate the creation of ads, images, all that stuff, voice, music now, but there’s a word that I’m hearing surface more and more out of, like, our creative teams and where I’m seeing strategic thinking shift, and it’s feedback loops. So if I can automate a lot of the doing, how am I getting creative about measuring the value I’m creating and how does that feed back into the experiences that we’re now able to keep optimizing for people? And that’s where, again, marketers are strongest. It’s the passion for wanting to serve, for wanting to provide value. And it’s shifting from, you know, how many ads do you turn out to how are you measuring the value of that ad or the value of that website or the value of that communication, and how is that continuing to serve both your business and your customer?

Liza Adams: Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, that quote has gotten some airtime.

Tessa Burg: I know.

Liza Adams: Especially with us marketers, right? And I don’t completely discount it because, you know, the AI that we see today is the dumbest AI that we’ll ever see going forward. And we don’t know what this thing is going to look like, you know, 6 months, 12 months, five years from now, right? But I do believe in embracing it ethically so that we can steer it. We don’t know what the future holds, but when we’re literate and we understand it, then we have a better shot at making the right decisions for ourselves, whether it’s for our career, our families, our teams, the business, and then ultimately society. So while it might be a scary thought, I think we have such a responsibility as marketers, not just for ourselves but for the next generation of marketers, to figure out how to steer this.

Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

Liza Adams: And I think marketing in and of itself, the craft is evolving. So in the many companies that I’m now advising and I’m inspiring what’s possible with AI, I’m now seeing that, you know, to your point, the mundane tasks, you know, the repetitive tasks, we’ve built GPTs, or little tools, AI tools to do those things. The reason we do those things is in the past we didn’t have time to do strategies, we didn’t have time to do this, you know, deep thinking when it comes to understanding our customers in the market landscape and how we create categories, we didn’t have time to review all of these customer interviews, customer insights from call transcripts, right? Now AI is able to do that. It’s able to distill some of those insights, and then now we have a broader and deeper picture about the market. With that kind of a framework, we can now make decisions, better decisions. So when I think about AI, you know, it’s not just about faster, it’s not just about better. I actually believe marketing teams and businesses that will go beyond faster and better will be leading the charge. And what’s beyond faster and better? It’s not just stopping with our existing processes, making those faster and better, it’s actually rethinking and reimagining how we do things. And that’s a lot of human power, right? Like, it’s our creativity, it’s our strategy, it’s our experiences that will allow us to go beyond thinking how we do it today and just making it incrementally better. We are now going to redesign and reimagine how it could be. So, how marketers might be working today might be very different, you know, with how marketers will be working in the next, let’s say, two to five years. You know, just like, you know, a great example would be like Lyft and Uber. You know, app-based rideshare. If we were just looking at incremental improvements, we probably would’ve had more taxis and maybe some software that allows us to hail a taxi online, right? But instead, we now have Uber and Lyft, a very different way of thinking about it. You know, before we said, we would not get into a stranger’s car, now we’re getting into a stranger’s car, we’re asking them to take us everywhere and including tipping them, and we’re relying on the number of stars on the app to determine whether it’s a trustworthy driver. So, it’s just such a different way of thinking, and I think companies and marketers that can go beyond faster and better with the use of AI will be the ones that lead the charge.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, no, I agree. But that’s such a big challenge. Like, how do you change? And humans, much less marketers, don’t really love change. And especially for us that are more senior in our careers, we’ve gotten really good at doing what we do, we’ve probably gotten very good at making processes more efficient over time. So how do you build trust with marketers and with clients to say, “Hey, doing it differently is going to work and doing it differently is where we need to go to elevate strategically.”

Liza Adams: It’s such an important question, and I empathize with a lot of people because, you know, the technology’s not even the hardest part of this. People are the hardest part of this transformation because change management is super hard. We’ve gone through this, you know, many, many inflection points, and I’ve gone through it, like internet, cloud, mobile, social, SaaS, and then now AI. Like, we went through it, and I think this one is more nebulous. This one is arguably the most impactful one that will change the way we work and live. And not everybody is in that same space that, hey, I need to learn this thing and I need to understand, I need to embrace it, and I need to use it responsibly. And I think we need to be super empathetic to where everyone is in that journey. ‘Cause there are people who outright fear AI, and fear paralyzes people. And, you know, some ignore that it’s even happening. And then there are those that are embracing it fully, like, pushing it to its boundaries, can’t wait for the next launch of OpenAI’s new model, GPT-5, -6, you know, you name it, right? Can’t wait for AGI. The example that I give is my husband, he’s a published author of young adult science-fiction novels. And as a writer, he has trepidations about the use of AI because he feels that it would ingest some of his ideas, it would just ingest his books, and then it would ultimately be able to write the next series of his novels. So he has some challenges in thinking about how to use AI from that perspective. But at the same time, he is also a right-leg amputee from childhood cancer, and he so embraces AI from a robotics perspective because he knows that it can change the way people work and live for those people who have disabilities. So, I think this discussion around, you know, the acceptance and use of AI in so many instances is such a personal one, and we need to give ourselves a lot of grace in the journey and a lot of respect for where everyone is. But I do feel that what has worked, at least for me, in talking with my clients is regardless of where you are on that spectrum, and where you are might differ depending on the use case, just like my husband is, it is so important to just understand it, ’cause when we understand, then we can make the right decisions, right? So taking that first step of understanding and not ignoring, not fearing will give us, you know, some leverage to make those right decisions, if that makes sense.

Tessa Burg: Oh, it does. And I think, too, understanding it needs to go beyond just listening to headlines. And it does take some time and some discipline to educate yourself, to have conversations. When we look ahead at the opportunities we have, so, what excites you most about what’s coming next, specifically in the field of marketing?

Liza Adams: Yeah, before I answer that, I just want to add something to what I said previously. I think understanding AI also reduces the risk of us being influenced by others who may or may not hold the same values that we do.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, that’s a good point.

Liza Adams: So.

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Liza Adams: That’s also just another benefit of just knowing for yourself, right? And then your next question, sorry, Tessa, what did you say?

Tessa Burg: Oh, no problem. What opportunities do we have moving forward in AI?

Liza Adams: Yeah, so in terms of opportunities, I think there’s such an opportunity, especially for marketing leaders, to upscale and reskill this next generation that’s coming up, right? I think about my daughter, she’s 17, she’s gonna go to college, she’s interested in engineering. That was also my path. And then after engineering, I went into marketing. And I’m thinking about these college grads and early-in-career people because they could potentially be the most vulnerable to AI. And I think this upskilling and reskilling is such an opportunity for us to reduce the risk, and giving them, these early-in-career people, much better chances of thriving in this era. And that starts with education, right? In not just, you know, not just in college, but even in middle school, in elementary school. I think about, hey, show them, tell ’em about AI, tell ’em about how to use it. You know, the answer is less relevant, just like math, right? Answer is less relevant, how you got to that answer is the most important. How did you guide AI? How did you prompt AI? How did you challenge it? How did you get it to give you its sources? You know, how did you get it to give you its rationale? Like, all of those things, I think we need to start really thinking about education, and it’s such an opportunity, and I think there’s just a baseline there. Then more specifically for marketers, again, what I said before, it gives us an opportunity to elevate our strategic value and it also makes brands, helps us make a brand authentically human. Because if you think about marketing, you know, our North Star has always been our customer insights, right? Knowing the market so well. And in the world of AI, you know, we now have to balance a lot of things, we now have to balance convenience with privacy, efficiency with empathy, innovation with ethics, automation with a human touch. So all these things need to be balanced, and who’s going to balance that? It’s on marketing, right? Like, I can’t see any other function in the C-suite that has that responsibility. So it is such an opportunity for marketing to really get this balance of technology and elevating the most important human values. So to the extent that we can do that, you know, if you’re a marketer and you’re feeling like, oh my gosh, people think about me more tactically, guess what, we have two dimensions that we can really lean in on. One is this product market fit, get that right. The other dimension is earning trust. How do we earn trust? We earn trust by balancing those things that I talked about. So, opportunity from an education perspective, changing the perception of marketing, and then truly making an impact in the business through product market fit and earning trust. And I think companies and people that are able to do that will thrive in the era of AI.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, and on the education piece, one thing that, you know, I personally strongly believe, and I know not everyone agrees with, I would love to see data science introduced as part of a core curriculum earlier. And even if it’s, because, again, I know data science is in my background, so I’m totally biased, but I don’t know how you can truly describe how you got to an answer using AI unless you understand just some of the basics and the fundamentals, and because it all starts with data. And I think marketers know that. You know, we’ve been, marketers have been data-driven and love data, and it’s how we measure and how we influence and create the campaigns, like we’ve talked about. But data and AI has so many other nuances. It’s not just about first name, last name, address, their title, who they are, it’s about the whole collection and that every time I go to use a model, the data I select to put into that model is incredibly important. And if I only use a tool and I don’t understand how the data was collected, where it came from, how it’s being trained, if that’s not something I know how it got there, then it is very hard as a marketer to validate that my output is right, that it is higher quality, and that it has given me that level of strategic thinking that I need. And so I think there is a huge opportunity, and I hope just like math, and you don’t just hand kids calculators. I’ve seen a lot of where people are, like, just starting to train on the tools, and it’s like, before we hand them the tool, can we hand them the science? And, you know, it doesn’t have to be, like, everyone has to be a data scientist, but it’s, like, just that base understanding, I hope starts to get introduced earlier.

Liza Adams: Yeah, it’s such an important point, because one of my good friends, Andy Crestodina, just fantastic digital marketer, he says that AI stands for average information until we actually apply our expertise, guide it with our expertise, guide it with our knowledge, and feed it good data.

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Liza Adams: Otherwise, bad prompt, no data, you’re gonna get the average of everything that it’s been trained on, which is 85% of the internet. So, we really, you know, to your point on the education front, like, how do you guide this thing? How do you gain the expertise so that you can guide it? So, like, I can’t guide it to be, like, a pilot, ’cause I don’t have that expertise, I can’t fly a plane. But my gosh, I can guide it like no one when it comes to segmentation, targeting, and positioning. I can guide it how to create categories, those kinds of things. So that’s super important. The data, what’s interesting about data is there’s hardly anyone talking about it.

Tessa Burg: Right.

Liza Adams: But it’s so critical, right? Like, we all know that we have bad data, messy data, incomplete data, missing data, all sorts of things. I think AI will push us to fix that problem, because unless we fix it, we’re gonna be feeding it bad information, and garbage in, garbage out. So, you know, whoever is doing the data strategy for the company, that is yet another job that AI will elevate, because it will require good data. I mean, data is fuel for the AI. That’s why every AI company in the world wants to have a partnership with a media company, because they have all the data. It thrives on data. That’s the food, that’s what keeps AI alive.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, and to your earlier point, I think that if marketers start to get the training, the education on data, ’cause it’s different kinds of data, like, we have to open up how we describe data and what is good-quality data, not only will you have a seat on how your company uses AI, the innovation they build, how to do work differently, but those board seats will start to increase because it is a currency. Like, this is where we’re at.

Liza Adams: That’s right.

Tessa Burg: So, this has been an amazing conversation, but I’m sitting here, and it’s like a lot of information. Where can people learn more? Where can they start to get the right types of skills or have the right conversations? Any resources you recommend?

Liza Adams: Yeah. So, you know, especially for marketers, I would highly recommend the Marketing AI Institute. So look them up, and they have a lot of great resources from, you know, use cases to strategy to trends. Paul Roetzer, who is the CEO and founder of the Marketing AI Institute, has a weekly podcast called “The AI Show.” And I don’t miss it, because, you know, it’s hard to follow the key people in AI ’cause there’s so many of them, but Paul and his team follow them. And I feel like if I can once a week listen to him, that I feel like I’m staying on track and don’t feel so far behind. And that I am also speaking at the Marketing AI Conference in September, September 10th through the 12th, that’s also put out by the Marketing AI Institute. And it’s just such a great conference because it has such a diversity in topics, from strategy to applied AI, from tactics to ethics, all sorts of things. It also has a very diverse slate of speakers. And, you know, if AI is going to benefit all of humanity, we have to have representation from all of humanity, and that means diverse perspectives, diverse cultures, diverse backgrounds, races, and gender. And I think the MAICON, the event, does a really great job at that.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I agree. We will be at MAICON as well, and that’s M-A-I-C-O-N if you’re Googling it to get tickets. And Liza has a code, ADAMS100 to get a discount, we have a code, MODOP100. But one of the things I love most about that event is you do leave feeling more confident and inspired. So for people who are, you know, concerned, have a little bit of anxiety, one that’s totally natural, I think we all do. But you’ll connect with people in the same place, and the talks are just so inspirational. It’s a great, great place to get that confidence, get direction, and make connections with a really supportive community.

Liza Adams: Yeah, there’s such a sense of community, that’s such an important point, and it doesn’t… And at MAICON, right? Because there’s the Slack community, and you build these relationships, and like I said, you know, in the AI community, there’s just so much sharing ’cause no one is an expert. So it’s when we share that we elevate each other and ultimately, I’m hoping, all of humanity.

Tessa Burg: Yes. So, come see Liza at MAICON, come see us. But if people wanna reach out to you directly, Liza, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Liza Adams: Yeah, so follow me on LinkedIn. And I generally post a lot of my experiences, what works and what doesn’t work with AI, especially as it relates to strategic marketing. I do things, I post about strategy as well as tactics, how to use AI. So it’s just Liza Adams, find me on LinkedIn, and my website is growthpath.net.

Tessa Burg: Perfect, well, thanks so much for joining us again today. It was an awesome conversation. And yeah, I’m excited to meet you in person at MAICON.

Liza Adams: Thank you, I’m looking forward to it, and thank you again for inviting me, it’s been such a pleasure.

Tessa Burg: If you wanna hear more episodes of “Leader Generation,” you can find them at modop.com. That’s M-O-D-O-P .com. Until next time, have a great week.