By Alex Winter
Apr 15, 2024
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Generative Search: How AI Will Transform Marketing ft. Mike Kaput [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep.23]
By Alex Winter
Apr 15, 2024
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Note: This transcript was generated by AI and has not been edited for accuracy
Mike
0:00:00
Alright Alex, I mean the truth is AI is going to change everything. And the good news is marketers right now can get started with AI to give themselves superpowers.
Alex
0:00:11
I can't wait to talk about it. Let's go. Welcome back to Endless Customers. My name is Alex Winter and today I'm joined by Mike Kaput who's the chief content officer at Marketing artificial intelligence Mike is an old friend Mike. It's good to see you again, buddy. Welcome to the show Hey good to see you, man. Yeah, I'm really happy to have you we have a lot of ground to cover We're talking about a really hot topic these days artificial intelligence Your company and what you do. I feel like you're at the leading edge
Alex
0:00:43
You were just joking about this before we started recording that five years ago you guys were talking about how important AI was going to be and how it's going to change the industry and all the things it was going to do. And I don't know if I was fully bought in back then, but man, was I was I wrong. You guys were definitely on the leading edge of of all this. So I think a good place to start for our listeners and for our viewers is just to get a little back story about your journey with artificial intelligence, the whole PR2020 story, like just give us a little background before we get into like the actual weeds of today's topic.
Mike
0:01:17
Yeah, sure. It's great to be here. And our company Marketing AI Institute started way back in 2016. So our company is a media event and education company that helps marketers and business leaders understand pilot and scale AI. And one of the ways we're able to do that, as well as we've been lucky enough to do is because we started out as marketers and business leaders. We're not data scientists, machine learning engineers, anything like that. We used to work at, our owner used
Mike
0:01:51
to own a marketing agency, like you mentioned, called PR2020 at the time. And I used to be on the leadership team at that agency. So our founder and CEO, Paul Racer, owned PR2020 until he sold it a few years ago. I worked with Paul there for probably about a decade doing anything and everything related to digital marketing for a variety of clients in the B2B and B2C spaces. As part of that exploration, we were actually HubSpot's ever first agency partner, you know, kind of at the forefront of the marketing automation revolution. And as part of our exploration of marketing technology, we kind of started going down the rabbit hole of artificial intelligence. Paul was so early to this, as early as probably about 2011, he had been investigating artificial
Mike
0:02:45
intelligence and what it was, what it could mean for our industry, our clients, business, and society as a whole. And several years later, I helped Paul write the AI chapter in his second book. I think this would probably have been around 2013, 2014. And from there, we kind of just really caught the bug of seeing how the dots started to connect with how this smarter technology could help us be better marketers and better business people. So that kicked off like a multi-year investigation formally of AI where we were researching deeply,
Mike
0:03:25
writing about artificial intelligence, thinking through everything that could relate to our business and our clients. And in 2016, this all culminated in us launching Marketing AI Institute, which quickly grew from a secondary business to PR 2020 to grow into an industry-leading source of education, of guidance for all these businesses that are trying to figure out artificial intelligence. Like we were talking about before we started recording, the last couple of years have just
Mike
0:03:58
incredible in the sense of, you know, I don't think a ton has changed from how we counsel people to Approach and act on AI we still try to focus on use cases keep things simple and actionable and really understandable but man since ChatGPT The whole world has just woken up to the idea that AI has the potential to change everything in marketing and business.
Alex
0:04:25
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. We're all woke over here, and I think around the world, people are excited. Maybe all the feels, excited, scared, everything, but there's a lot of potential. And you guys have really been on the leading edge and the leading voice in that.
Alex
0:04:40
You also hold an event every year that's fully based around marketing artificial intelligence, which if anyone hasn't been or hasn't heard of it, it's called Macon. It is 100% worth checking out. It's in Cleveland, Ohio. It's something that you really shouldn't miss out if you're a marketer.
Alex
0:04:54
Also, you have a really great book that I got here, Mike. And your name's on here. You're a co-author with Paul. That's so cool. This is a great book. Tell us a little bit about the book and the background and how that all came to be as well because this is a really great resource for people.
Mike
0:05:08
Yeah, so the book, Marketing Artificial Intelligence, you know, AI Marketing and the Future of Business, it really came about because in our work, publishing hundreds of articles, doing consulting, doing events, education, workshops at Marketing AI Institute, Paul realized that there wasn't a singular book to really give somebody and say,
Mike
0:05:33
okay, here's where I would start. You could certainly go on our website at the time and find all sorts of helpful material, but nobody as far as 2022 had written what we found to be a definitive evergreen book on if I'm a marketing leader, where should I start? Why does this matter? And how do I get going with artificial intelligence?
Mike
0:05:56
So it really came out of, this is the book that we wish had existed, I think when we started looking into AI as marketers. So Paul felt very passionately about creating that book. I was very, very blessed to be a co-author on the book and help with some of the material and the content. So from there, it kind of just spiraled into a book that we now have had thousands of people read
Mike
0:06:23
and that are often reviewing it and writing to us saying how much they loved it. So it's been a really cool journey.
Alex
0:06:30
That's amazing. And I really admire that there wasn't a book on this and you had all these questions and as you were learning you were like, you know what, we should just write the book. And you did and it's pretty darn impressive. You also, as if you aren't already doing enough cool things, you also have a really amazing podcast.
Alex
0:06:46
Tell us a little bit about the podcast. I know you're on the Endless Customer podcast and we're so pumped to have you here, but tell us a little bit about your podcast as well, because it's definitely something that I listen to on a regular basis.
Mike
0:06:56
Absolutely, so the podcast is called The Artificial Intelligence Show, and until very recently, it was actually called The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Show, and what we do on it is each week, myself and Paul, our CEO, break down what is most important to understand and be following in terms of AI news each and every week.
Mike
0:07:17
And as anyone who's spent two seconds paying attention to AI, like, you know, there's more news than you can possibly follow. So we really try to provide a valuable service to our audience by spending a lot of time, a lot of energy curating what's going on and layering in our kind of context and expertise based on our seven plus years formally doing this and probably almost a decade following the space. So it's become really, really popular for that purpose. We dropped marketing from the name just because
Mike
0:07:51
we realized most of the topics we were covering week in, week out, definitely had a marketing flavor and focus and a overall business focus, but were just applicable to the field of artificial intelligence. There's so much overlap. It's not really a siloed of a field as you might expect. I mean, there's vertical focus solutions
Mike
0:08:11
and tactics and things like that. But really when you see an advancement like a ChatGPT, right? It applies to more than just marketing. So that podcast is really the top way that we reach our audience these days, it's also a tough way we stay on top of artificial intelligence.
Alex
0:08:29
Yeah, it's a really great podcast too, because, and the reason why I say that, for me personally, AI at times, there's so much emerging tech and tools, and I feel like there's something new every day to the point where it almost feels like you're drinking from a fire hose. So to be able to have a resource or a place
Alex
0:08:44
where there's a central source of truth and you can focus on the things that really matter, your podcast does a great job of helping kind of sift through the noise, if you know what I mean. So, thank you for all that you guys are doing, and thanks for sharing your story. Now let's get into some nitty gritty. I want to talk shop with you, all right?
Alex
0:09:00
So the first thing on my list here, and this is something that we talk a lot about with our clients here at Impact, and I think it's a big concern for a lot of business leaders, business owners. What is happening with search and the old Google model and like, people aren't really sure what's happening with Gemini and all this stuff, so I think the big question is like, is search dead or is it shifting?
Alex
0:09:23
And really, can we get your professional take
Mike
0:09:25
on what you think the future's gonna look like with search? Yeah, so this is a really, really quickly evolving space, so take everything with a grain of salt that you read or hear or see, but what's happening here, it appears, is that our behavior is pretty quickly changing to no longer traditionally Googling information. You know, I think for whatever benefits Google has brought our business, which are many, because we rely quite a bit on organic traffic, Google's traditional search experience is
Mike
0:09:56
not the only way to find information anymore and to find websites, companies, brands, insights, and the traditional Google search experience in some ways feels a little broken. There's a lot of ads, there's a lot of work to be done to get at the actual information you need. Things like conversational AI assistance, the ChatGPTs of the world, generative AI responses, which Google's experimenting with as well,
Mike
0:10:22
we'll talk about that in a second. These are, in some ways to some people, I would count myself in this group, superior ways to get the information you're looking for. It just doesn't make sense in a lot of people's minds anymore to have to go scroll through a bunch of blue links and go read a bunch of articles to get the one piece of information. Now this presents pretty obvious And that's one of the obvious problems, right? If you're getting a conversational AI assistant or agent, even if it's linking to stuff,
Mike
0:10:55
to give you a comprehensive response to something, what does that do to the unbranded organic search traffic you are getting for your business? I don't have the complete answer here, but I do know it changes a lot of things. I mean, we're not yet seeing a dramatic downward pressure on organic traffic, but I think you have to accept moving forward that more people rather than less
Mike
0:11:22
will get their information or at least part of it from conversational AI responses, whether it's through ChatGPT, Perplexity.AI is the tool we could talk about, but that cites its sources. There's a bunch of other ways that we're seeing AI tools be able to deliver highly relevant information that doesn't necessarily require you to click through to a brand,
Mike
0:11:45
which turns traditional content marketing, for one, totally on its head. So, long story short, I don't have like a silver bullet here of what I think you should do to counter this. I think everyone's figuring it out, because one, we have to start thinking of how do these tools, these assistants, what information do they ingest when they're trained? So like how are they mentioning you versus somebody else when someone asks a question
Mike
0:12:14
about your business? Two, okay, we don't necessarily know how they're trained, but we do know they train on publicly available internet data. So I think actually, and this hat tip to Chris Penn, who I think was the first person I heard talking about this seriously, we have to make sure our brand is everywhere possible online because you want to essentially give yourself the best chance of being in the training data these models use. That's very unscientific, admittedly.
Mike
0:12:48
Admittedly, I don't think there's going to necessarily today be a way to like game ChatGPT or something, right? And then I think we also have to take seriously that while search probably isn't dead we're probably just looking at more people clicking through to your website for The branded terms for the middle and bottom of the funnel terms those unbranded top of funnel Informational terms. I just don't see how those aren't going to get hit pretty hard. So we have to figure out ways to, you have to figure out ways to get people to ask for you by name rather than
Mike
0:13:21
discovering you. I think that involves some PR podcasting. It's always still a great idea. I think from a marketing and brand perspective to have channels you own, surely there's nothing wrong with publishing really informative, helpful articles on your website. But if you're saying, hey, 99% of my traffic comes from organic search, think it may be time to start diversifying.
Alex
0:13:49
Yeah, that's a good word, diversifying, because I feel like with the shift that's happening, it sounds like search is definitely not dead yet. It is shifting, but you still need to play in that sandbox while also starting to experiment in the AI sandbox and figure out how all that is going to work together as we move forward. Because you're right, it is kind of a gray area. Nobody really knows what the next year is going to look like with search and where it's
Alex
0:14:12
going to take us. Absolutely. Yeah. So for platforms like Bing and for Google Search Engine, we may be going down the rabbit hole here, but do you think in the future they'll start to have monetization on generative search results and they're going to start doing the same thing that they always do where the ads start to come into play and monetization starts to come into play.
Mike
0:14:32
Yeah, without any special knowledge
Mike
0:14:33
of how the brains at Google or Microsoft work, I feel like they have to at some point because Google at least is not giving up the golden goose. I mean, they're experimenting with generative AI search results. At some point, they are still going to have to make a fair amount of money from search ads. Now they may diversify over time to the point where they don't need it, but in the short
Mike
0:15:00
term it would not surprise me if there are sponsored results in their generative AI results. I just don't really see a way around that. Maybe Microsoft would be less inclined to do that because they don't have to rely on search revenue to run their business. So you could see perhaps they, in competition with Google, actually go without any type of advertising or monetization of those results
Mike
0:15:28
because they don't really need it. Google though, I don't see how they can get around it.
Alex
0:15:34
Right, yeah, no, their bread and butter is their ad revenue that they make and that's how they are part of the magnificent seven, one of the biggest corporations in the entire world. Yeah, it's crazy, but I also, I love the shift that's happening because companies like OpenAI and some of these smaller companies
Alex
0:15:50
that are really AI-focused are starting to become bigger players and are going head-to-head with people like Google. I remember when ChatGPT came out and the whole story about Google scrambling to try to come up with Gemini or some type of response of their version of their AI to have a response to them. So it's gonna be interesting as we move forward
Alex
0:16:07
into the future here to see what happens with these corporations and these emerging companies and tools. So with that, what's one of your favorite new AI tools that maybe people don't know about or something that maybe you're using that has been kind of flying under the radar?
Mike
0:16:20
I'm gonna give you three quick answers. Three, we got three, I love it, okay, cool. I got three, and there's a reason I'm doing three. I'm not trying to dodge the question of one, but I think there's been three developments that are kind of important for people to test out that are interesting. So the first is a tool called CLAUDE 3 Opus,
Mike
0:16:40
which is, CLAUD is a model from Anthropic, which is one of the major AI players. People have
probably heard of CLAUD, but CLAUD3 Opus is the newest, latest, most intelligent model that they've released. It came out literally this month. And I think it's important to note because it's so much better at certain use cases
Mike
0:17:02
than some of the tools you may have used in the past. It's pretty incredible. It's getting quite a lot of buzz for how good it is at writing, at summarization, at understanding tone of voice. So really the point here is not use this tool versus chat GPT plus or something else, but just understand that these models are quickly, quickly improving. So I think it's really beneficial to test out a number of different tools for the same use case. So if you don't just say, Hey, I use ChatGPT for writing something, I want to
Mike
0:17:36
write with AI. So I continually test ChatGPT, quad three, et cetera. So I'll leave it.
Alex
0:17:42
Yeah, no, that's a good point. It's almost like A-B testing when you're testing different paid promotions or something like that. Yeah, yeah, okay, so definitely try to A-B test and use different platforms. Don't just stick with GPT, which honestly, I've been using GPT every day and I haven't been experimenting enough.
Alex
0:17:57
So I'm taking a little mental note here. That's something I'm gonna have to do when I get off this call with you.
Mike
0:18:03
And the second tool I wanted to mention, just because of the search conversation, because I did reference it, is called Perplexity. And people may have heard of this tool, it's not a secret, but if you're not exploring tools like Perplexity for doing research and getting information, what Perplexity does is it gives you conversational results like generative AI results,
Mike
0:18:23
like you would get from ChatGPT, except it cites all its sources and links out to everything it found and where it found it. So it's really, really, really valuable for vetting your research. And I just can't live without this tool now. And in a weird way, it's replaced for me, at least habitually, traditional Googling. Like, perplexity is the first stop, not Google for me, which is interesting. Google may bake those capabilities more and more into search, which would be amazing,
Mike
0:18:53
but it's just really like a powerful reminder of how quickly these tools can change your behavior.
Alex
0:19:00
Totally. I like that it cites its sources too, because for me, I'm a fact checker. I like to make an informed decision, so to be able to have those resources to really just double check and make sure that the information I have is correct and accurate is important for me, yeah.
Mike
0:19:14
And you have to, because as good as the answers sound, these tools still get many things wrong, make stuff up, so you have to be fact-checking. The last tool I'm gonna mention, because I don't wanna totally be negative to Google the whole time, is the latest version of Google Gemini. So Gemini, the one you can get
Mike
0:19:33
in a consumer-facing fashion, Gemini 1.0, you can get through Gemini Advanced, they're like paid plan. It's really good, I use it pretty often. But they gave us now recently, if you go to Google's AI Studio, you have sandbox access, like kind of beta access to Gemini 1.5.
Mike
0:19:52
So it's kind of like an ugly interface, you're probably not gonna be using this for to replace like a ChatGPT. But what's interesting and really important to understand, when you go to Gemini 1.5, there's a little counter at the bottom of the chat window that goes up to a little over 1 million. And that is its context window.
Mike
0:20:13
It can take in more than a million tokens. That's its like memory. So you can upload up to a million tokens or over the series of a conversation, it can remember up to a million tokens. Now what that means is a million tokens translates to about 700,000 words. So start to think about it's not just about chatting
Mike
0:20:37
with a chatbot, you can literally upload entire books to this thing, you can have conversations that last for probably a year. I don't know what the token limit is of a very long conversation but 700,000 words is a lot.
Alex 0:20:51 That's a lot.
Mike
0:20:52
So I would highly encourage people to start experimenting with that and just see what's starting to become possible because that long context window opens up so many more possibilities of doing research, summarization, having much more context about anything you're doing with strategy, with getting, prompting it for anything. The more material you can give one of these tools in one go, the better results you get. So this really does matter.
Alex
0:21:18
Yeah, no, it definitely matters. And I think to your point too, you said this a few times, that it's a landscape that's changing so quickly and so rapidly and it's exciting, but it's almost like a meteor shooting through the night sky it's going 100 miles an hour and it's like, do you find or do you think that that pace is gonna continue and that trajectory
Alex
0:21:36
is just gonna keep like full steam ahead?
Mike
0:21:39
Or do you think eventually it'll plateau at a certain point in time?
Alex
0:21:41
This is a hard question to answer.
Mike
0:21:43
I mean, everything I've seen tells me this is not letting up. The pace shows no signs of slowing down to me. I'm sure at some point you run into some type of technical limit or barrier that stops us from going as fast as we're going, but I have not seen anything so far that says things are slowing down. In fact, in some ways, they feel like they're speeding up when you look at how quickly
Mike
0:22:12
some of these models have advanced, how much we're suddenly able to do with them in a short time. So I think you just have to accept the new normal is we're moving at light speed for the next few years at least.
Alex
0:22:24
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right too. It's you just gotta get to get on board and hold on tight as we fly through.
Mike
0:22:29
Yeah, it's so true.
Alex 0:22:31 It's so true.
Alex
0:22:31
Hey, I'm gonna go a little off script here because I have a question. I was talking has just kind of sparked this with me, right? So you interface with a lot of companies, B2B, B2C, you've had decades of experience doing this. Do you have any stories you can share with or pertaining to like companies that maybe were resistant to AI and have sense, you know, maybe read your book or listen to your podcast and have started to implement AI
Mike
0:22:52
and how it maybe has shifted their business for the better? Yeah, in a weird way, I think that's the story of many of the companies we work with, especially when we do like private workshops or speaking engagements, this is where you really see it on the ground. It's not that the companies are bringing us in because they hate AI and they're skeptical of it,
Mike
0:23:13
but you go speak to an audience, say it's a trade organization Where they've got 500 people in the room from many different companies and the organizers themselves say this is a really hot topic It's really important. We are all in we use it in our own organization, but the audience might not so there's every talk I do is Basically are mostly a room full of skeptics in one way or another right which is totally normal and healthy. You should be skeptical of many of the things out there related to AI.
Alex
0:23:43
Yeah, and psychologically, overall, I feel like people are resistant to change, at least in the beginning. It takes a little bit of time to embrace that
Mike
0:23:51
and get into the full swing of adopting these new ideas. Absolutely, and I think what really kind of lights me up and makes me really happy is then when you're in a room with these people and you're saying, look, look, look, like there's a lot of considerations. There's a lot of concerns. We're not downgrading or diminishing the fact that some of this can be scary.
Mike
0:24:12
There's risks and we have to talk about those. But let me zoom out and show you in our own company, the massive amount of time we've saved, the bandwidth we've saved, the results we've already gotten at a small company for certain use cases, applying AI, and you can do the same thing and you start to see the flip switch for people who are like, wait a second, nobody ever told me these tools can empower me too.
Mike
0:24:37
And that's a really exciting thing to see. That happens time and time again when we talk to companies of all sizes, all industries, the skeptics, I'm not saying they become not skeptical, but it's really empowering to be shown real life examples of, hey, my job is a lot better now than it was two years ago because of how we've deployed these tools. It's as simple as that.
Alex
0:25:01
Totally, yeah, no, there's a shift that has to happen. It's a paradigm shift, because it happened with me, too, where at first I was afraid. I was petrified. No, I'm not gonna sing, I'm kidding. But no, I was afraid of it because in my mind, it was like, this is just gonna eventually get so technically advanced that like it'll replace my job and then like my basically
Alex
0:25:19
my industry my job will be non-existent a computer will will do it for me right but that's not true and what I'm realizing is to your point exactly there are tools that help me do my job way more efficiently way faster and something that used to take me four hours to do now only takes me like an hour and a half to do which when you're looking at as a business owner you're looking at productivity with your company, like that's a game changer, and it can really shift your bottom line
Alex 0:25:42
and everything that happens with your organization as you grow and you scale. So for business owners out there that are listening, that haven't messed with AI, that maybe have been a little resistant or afraid, and rightfully so, what can they do to maybe break that mold or to start to adopt some of these things,
Alex
0:25:59
or what's a good first step for them to take?
Mike
0:26:03
So what I typically recommend is there's not really a substitute for what I would formally call just messing around with these tools. Because look, we both have podcasts, books, everything, websites, you can consume all the information in the world. We're happy to provide it and it's necessary. But really, if you have not just spent some time, you said you have ChatGPT open all the time. That's what I'm talking about.
Mike
0:26:30
Like you don't have to have formal training education or even knowledge to fire up like chat GPT plus for 20 bucks in the next month and keep it open all the time. When you work, keep it almost like one window here, the rest of your work here and start trying to use it for everything. It will fail a lot, you will get frustrated, there's not really a handbook for exactly how to use it, but as you start to try using some of these tools for a variety of things, there is a moment
Mike
0:27:04
where after, I don't know if it's an hour, a few hours, 10 hours, I'm not sure, it's probably different for different people, where it starts to click and you start to be like, you have that like, aha moment, where you're like, whoa, wait, that thing that it just did was really, really cool. That's the key, it's like getting geeked out,
Mike
0:27:24
getting excited, having fun, eventually getting to that moment or having awe around it, that's motivating, because then you're gonna start to be like, oh, okay, I don't get everything, I don't understand everything, but I'm seeing what this can do, I'm interested to go see if it can do A, B, or C as well. So that really, that initial experimentation
Mike
0:27:46
of using it as a true co-pilot during your day, I think is a really worthwhile one for anyone who hasn't really gotten started. And the good news is if you do that for like a week, you'll be ahead of most people because most people aren't doing that.
Alex
0:28:00
Yeah, I think that's such a great point. Most people aren't doing it. So just 20 bucks to check out GPT is really not that much of an investment and start to experiment That's what I did and I'm one of those people that as I started to use it more now It's that window is open 24 7 and I talked to it a lot and you know What the most fascinating thing for me is it starts to learn? Like your behavior and what like not in a the way that it does it it almost like it Predictive like it knows some of the things I'm gonna ask because I have repeating tasks every week
Alex
0:28:29
and I have certain things that I use it for every day, every week, right? So it starts to learn these things and it gets smarter and it gives me better responses and it's just really crazy to see how it develops over time. Yeah, definitely fascinating. Cool, well, great advice, Mike. So for people out there that maybe have more questions
Alex
0:28:45
about marketing artificial intelligence, what's going on in your guys' world? Are there any events coming up, anything people should know about? How can they get in touch with you if they have follow-up questions or anything like that?
Mike
0:28:54
Yeah, absolutely. So a few things going on. First, if you wanna get in touch with us, you can go to marketingainstitute.com and reach out to us there, or come find me on LinkedIn. Pretty active there, easy to find. Please feel free to reach out, connect, message me.
Mike
0:29:10
I'm happy to help in any way I can. In terms of upcoming events, I think there are two I'd like to really quickly mention. So we have started running virtual events that have been extremely successful for different areas of AI for marketing. And the next one we have coming up is on June 6th, and it's from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. totally virtual. That's Eastern time, by the way. And it's our AI for B2B marketers summit. So this has a free registration option. We're going to expect probably thousands of B2B marketers.
Mike
0:29:45
We're going to learn every aspect of what they need to know about AI for their own particular B2B focus roles. So these events have been extremely highly reviewed, very successful, very informative for the people that attend. Highly, highly recommend checking that out.
Alex
0:30:02
And it's free, so no excuses.
Mike 0:30:05 It's free.
Mike
0:30:05 Nothing to lose.
Alex
0:30:06
That's amazing.
Alex 0:30:07
Wow.
Alex 0:30:07 Very cool.
Mike
0:30:08
So if you go to our website and just go to events, you'll see it right there. AI for B2B Marketers Summit. And the other thing I would mention, which you alluded to, is our yearly conference, which is Macon, the Marketing AI Conference at MAICON.AI. This is our biggest conference of the year. It's where our core community and network all show up and get together to learn, to share knowledge, to swap war stories about deploying AI. We had 700 or so people last year come to Cleveland, Ohio, our home base for it. We're expecting about double that, actually, this year.
Mike
0:30:47
So it has turned into kind of an industry leading conference. If you do anything related to marketing or business, I'd highly, highly recommend sending someone from your team to the event. You can reach out to me for more info about that as well.
Alex
0:31:02
That's amazing. You're doubling down, 1400 people next year?
Mike 0:31:05 Wow, that's.
Mike
0:31:06
That's what we're thinking.
Alex
0:31:07
That's amazing. That doesn't surprise me, honestly. And Impact, we're big supporters. We go every year. Last year, unfortunately I didn't get to go last year. I was a little jealous. I had some FOMO for sure, but the team came back with some amazing ideas and tools and takeaways that I don't know if we would have had without going to the event.
Alex
0:31:24
So very exciting stuff. So free event, a live event, you got to check out Macon and Marketing Artificial Intelligence. Mike, it's always great talking with you, man. I love seeing you. So you're welcome on the show anytime. I hope you know that.
Mike
0:31:37
Oh, thank you.
Mike
0:31:38
This is awesome.
Alex
0:31:39
I love it. Awesome, man. Well, make sure to say hi to Paul and the rest of the team for us, and thank you, everybody that's been listening and watching. This is Endless Customers. I'm Alex Winter. I'm Alex Winter. We'll see you on the next episode.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
About this Episode
If you’re like most of the professional world, the first you really heard about AI was the launch of ChatGPT.
Not so for Mike Kaput.
He’s been studying AI for more than a decade. For him, ChatGPT was less of a revelation and more of a culmination.
He and Paul Roetzer have been monitoring AI and its potential impact on marketing for years. Together, they wrote the widely-cited Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business. They also run the Marketing AI Institute, where Mike is the Chief Content Officer. Each year, they host MAICON, the Marketing and Artificial Intelligence Conference.
At a time when too many phony thought leaders release garbled prophecies and our LinkedIn feeds are choked with posts about AI that are written by AI, Mike is an anomaly: someone thoughtful and well-informed.
In this episode, Mike stops by to share his own vision of the current state of AI — as well as what we can all expect in the months and years ahead.
He and Alex cover:
- The history of MAICON
- Generative search and the future of SEO
- The pace of innovation
- Overlooked AI tools
- Pragmatic first steps every business leader should take
Connect with Mike
Mike Kaput is the Chief Content Officer at Marketing AI Institute, co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business, and co-host of the Artificial Intelligence Show podcast.
Connect with Mike on LinkedIn
Learn about The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute
Sign up to attend MAICON 2024
Keep Learning
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Endless Customers is a podcast produced and distributed by IMPACT, a sales and marketing training organization.
We coach businesses to implement our They Ask, You Answer framework to build trust and fill their pipeline.
For inquiries about sponsorship opportunities or to be considered as a guest, email awinter@impactplus.com.
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