16 B2B Demand Generation Predictions For 2024

Taylor Wells (00:12.822)

Hey everyone. Welcome to the GTM news show. My name is Taylor Wells. And in this episode, we are going to be talking about my 16 demand generation predictions for 2024. Uh, so, you know, lots of change over the last couple of years. And as a demand generation leader for B2B companies, software and service companies, I've seen a lot of things happen over the past couple of years. And then most recently working as a consultant over this last year, the bunch of B2B, uh, companies in the demand generation realm.

I put together kind of a list of what I think is going to be really important as things that are going to change over the next couple of years and couple of years. But then also things you can do differently, right? And how to go to market a little bit differently, how to think about the most efficient ways to go to market. And so yeah, first, before we jump right in, I want to kind of set some context. Number one, we all know that the cost of acquiring customers has only gone up, right? And it's two reasons. Number one is every channel has gotten more saturated, right?

The cost to get people's attention and people's attention spans have only gotten more crowded, right? Every channel, whether it's outbound through email or cold calling, social selling, whether it's content, whether it's paid media, all of these different channels and programs have gotten harder and more saturated. Obviously, there's always opportunities to grow on kind of the fringes. But in general, the attention, getting people's attention has only gotten harder.

Um, mostly because there's all sorts of reasons, but, uh, it's only gotten harder. And then the other factor is there's more competition than ever, whether you're, if you're a service based company, you have things like globalization. You have things like the remote work world, you know, especially since the pandemic, there's now a million ways to solve any problem, right? And, um, so if you're a service based business, you have now competing, it's really cool cause you can serve people around the world, but now you're

Now your competition's all around the world as well. If you're a software company, you know, I just read a stat the other day that it was like an average software platform has 12 competitors. So unless you're an industry leader or unless you just have something that is groundbreaking and no one else can do it, you probably have a ton of competition in your space. And so between those two things, getting people's attention has only gotten harder and there's more competition. It just increased the cost.

Taylor Wells (02:38.314)
of getting customers, right? And making marketers, sellers, jobs a lot harder. And then also ultimately hitting your revenue goals has become a lot harder. So that's kind of some context, the bad news. The good news, there's also a lot of cool things that are coming out of this and it's forcing us to get even better at marketing, forcing us to do things differently than we've done in the past. And we'll talk a little bit about that as well.

It's one of the ways to get you also let you know that these predictions and strategies really come out of more of an enterprise focused motion. So if you're a PLG, product led growth, we have a very small ACV annual contract value. Like if you're a couple hundred dollars a year, right, and you're high velocity, a lot of these things won't be as applicable. Some of them will for sure as best practices. But a lot of the strategies that I've employed for my clients are usually higher ACVs, right? Think.

5,000, which is like SMB, all the way up into the millions, which is some of my clients have million dollar ACVs, right? You know, contract values. And then most of them are in that 30,000 to a couple hundred thousand dollar ACV. And that's kind of the sweet spot for a lot of these strategies. Anything smaller than that, some of these will work. Anything bigger than that, it gets even more niche. When you're in the million dollar strategies, it gets, you just have a different kind of mindset. Once again, some of these will apply, but really.

kind of the mid-market enterprise level ACVs. Once again, that $30,000 to a couple hundred thousand dollar ACVs is a sweet spot for these strategies. Once again, smaller and larger, it will work, but it's more nuanced for high velocity or really low velocity when you get into the, you know, Fortune 50 or Fortune 500 deals when you're in the multiple million dollar ACVs. So yeah, kind of some context there for you and

And once again, kind of going back a step further as well, as we've seen over the last probably 10 years with, you know, the cost to borrow money being zero, right? So VCs had a ton of money to invest in companies. It created an environment, in my opinion, of almost an assembly line motion when it comes to marketing and sales. How do we grow the fastest, not necessarily the most efficient, number one, and then also necessarily the best customer experience?

Taylor Wells (05:02.114)
So a lot of what I advocate for is getting back to really, how do we do great marketing, serve people? And I have this concept that's really, it's called the selfless advantage. Seems kind of like an oxymoron as a term, but the idea behind the selfless advantage is we combine two things. We combine empathy. How do we put ourselves in the buyer's shoes, right? But I think over the past 10 years and beyond,

We haven't put ourselves in the power shoes. We've put ourselves in how do we acquire customers as quickly as possible, not what is the best customer buying experience, not how do customers like to be marketed, not how do we serve first, which is kind of the second part of my selfless advantage, which is being selfless. How do we give without expectation? How do we actually not only market to people in the way they wanna be marketed to, but how do we serve people unconditionally through marketing and sales? And this is kind of what I've,

This is like, uh, if I could give anything away throughout this entire thing is this mindset of the selfish advantage has completely changed. Not only how I think about marketing and sales, but, um, it also makes it so much more enjoyable because I'm able to give to people, I'm able to help people through a medium that historically, especially in B2B has been very selfish. It's all about growth goals. It's all about, um, us hitting our numbers, even the terminology we use. Sales process lead magnets.

Like all these things are very selfish or self-focused, right? And I think because of the growth at all cost mindset over the last 10 years, especially in the B2B world, we've been so focused on, we didn't have to think about them, right? Whereas it's so interesting, if you look at other departments in any company, you look at HR, even finance, even product, customer success, customer service, all a lot of those departments, I think,

by definition have been a lot more customer centric, a lot more focused on the customer, focused on providing value, focused on building relationships, et cetera. Whereas marketing and sales, I think we've just created a culture of ultimately just caring ultimately about ourselves and not thinking about how do people like to be marketed to, number one. And then number two, how do we market them in a way that's serving them first, building that relationship. And I think you'll hear a lot about reciprocity, right? And I think reciprocity...

Taylor Wells (07:27.414)
totally works, you know, and if you look at all the data and all the science behind it, reciprocity totally works, right? If you give first, somebody's more inclined to respond to your ask. The problem with that is I think people are expecting that number one, and reciprocity is kind of, it's like level one, right? Well, it's better than nothing. It's better than being a selfish jerk and all you care about is just cramming something down somebody's throat for lack of a better expression. But I believe...

I think the next level, and we'll see this in the next year. Um, if I were to give you kind of a framework for all of my practices is ultimately in all these predictions and strategies is ultimately we're going to see the next year is the next level of reciprocity, which has really been selfless is unconditionally providing value with zero expectation. And you're, um, like, uh, you can probably see Alex from OZ. Uh, he talks about putting deposits in, right? And he talks a lot about reciprocity as a way to

to grow your business. And I think actually, I'm gonna go one step further, it's actually about unconditional deposits, right? Where you're not necessarily asking for anything in return. The people that can have that mindset, not only market to people to how they wanna be marketed to, which we're gonna be talking a lot about today, but then also, how do we make those deposits unconditionally without asking for anything in return and then letting them come to us, right? And then we'll talk a little bit about.

kind of those strategies as we think about 2024 and beyond. So I'll get off my soapbox, but just wanted to give you kind of my mindset as it comes to all of this stuff, this selfless advantage, the combination of being selfless, right? Of ultimately, how do we unconditionally serve people through marketing and sales, providing value, providing impact, but then also how do we have empathy? And then one little note there, empathy, just empathy is kind of the table stakes where you put yourself in somebody else's shoes,

Psychopaths are very empathetic, right? Cyber criminals, I work with a lot of cybersecurity companies are very empathetic, right? They put themselves in their shoes to manipulate people. And that's where the selfless part, I think you need to have the combination of being selfless and empathetic to really be able to serve people well, build relationships, drive impact, and ultimately get more customers through marketing and sales.

Taylor Wells (09:45.226)
So, and you also mentioned, you also probably noticed I mentioned a lot about sales too. Like, this is not just marketing, this is really all your go-to-market motions when it comes to demand generation. Demand generation is not just about generating leads for sales to close or generating pipeline for sales to close. Yeah, it's a huge part of it, right? It's that part of the journey. But all sorts of things influence that, how good your product is, your pricing, your competition, your...

Retention rates your landing which you're given an expand model. There's all these different factors that influence demand generation actually creating demand for your product and So that's why I think it's really important marketing and sales and really the whole organization thinking about this idea And then ultimately also thinking about marketing and sales as a product of its own It's it's your first product and as you'll see as we go through these things. You'll notice

Um, it's almost like a product, right? You have to think about your marketing and sales as a product, actually providing impact in exchange for attention. Cause that's what you're asking your, your audience for is attention. So let's jump right into it. My first predictions, my first two predictions all around AI. So AI has taken the world storm, obviously in the past year, it's been almost a little over a year since open AI launched, um, chat GP, uh, 3.5, I believe was the first one.

back in November of 2022, and it's been a crazy year. And it's already affecting marketing and sales. We're already seeing the tools, tons of tools. Every day there's a new AI marketing tool, a new AI sales tool that's coming out. Every platform now has some sort of AI component to it. And I'm pretty excited overall for the opportunities to use AI to make our lives easier and more efficient and et cetera, solve more problems.

But I think there's gonna be two pretty substantial impacts on marketing and sales. And the number one thing when it comes to demand generation is that because of AI content and because of the ability to create AI content, I predict in 2024 and beyond, we are gonna trust the internet even less than we do now. There's gonna be so much content on the internet that we don't know who made it. Is it real? Is it fake? And I think people already trust the internet.

Taylor Wells (12:03.806)
in general, not very well, right? I think it's only gotten less, if I can say that correctly. And our trust of the internet because of cyber crime, because of all sorts of just fake content, fake news, et cetera, misinformation, the political politicizing the internet, et cetera. We just trust the internet less, I think, than we ever have.

And so AI, I predict, is only going to make that worse. I'm sure there's going to be some sort of legislation. I'm sure the big tech companies are going to try to combat this, but overall, I think it's going to be really hard to combat this fact that we're going to have a hard time trusting the internet. Um, so with that, what does that mean for marketing and salespeople? What does that mean for creating design, uh, creating demand? I think sure we'll be able to use these tools to make us more efficient, right. But ultimately we're going to have to tap into relationships to kind of balance us out. And I think relationship led growth.

the ability to leverage community relationships, we'll talk a bunch about here as well, is really gonna be super important. So making sure you leverage relationships in addition to the internet, in addition to creating content, in addition to doing all those things, but how do we actually make meaningful connections because ultimately technology, I feel, is gonna be, just based on my own experiences, when I see predictions and I see where the internet's going, is gonna become less and less trustworthy.

So people are gonna rely more on relationships than ever, which is kind of crazy when, you know, the past 20 years, especially in my career, we've, you know, so much of our businesses, much of my businesses has been based on technology. And they were gonna kind of balance out in a lot of ways in relationships, especially once again, in enterprise demand generation and doing big ACVs and big deal sizes, you'll require more relationships. The second part of the AI predictions is that

marketing and sales folks obviously move faster and easier, which will be great in the short term, but will make every channel even more crowded. So if you think channels are crowded now, right, with content, the fact that AI will just desaturate these channels with more, you know, probably garbage, but also probably really good content, right, like AI is gonna, right now it's okay, right? The content is, you know, better than some.

Taylor Wells (14:26.794)
But overall, in a couple years, or even maybe even 2024, the content's gonna get so good that it's gonna be hard to differentiate between a human and AI, which will just make the channel saturated. Number one, there's gonna be more content than ever produced in all these channels. Number one, and then number two, kind of going back to my second point, there's gonna be less, the ability to trust it, right? But really, there's gonna be so much saturation. So my second prediction is really, we're gonna provide more impact. So what I mean by impact,

I actually got it from Winning by Design. They say the outcome of reoccurring revenue is the product of reoccurring impact. I love that word impact because they use it in their spiced sales process. I think impact is a great word. Value is a similar word for it. I think impact for me personally, I really like that because it encapsulates the idea of actually solving a problem.

and actually changing the direction and helping somebody. So number one for AI predictions is we're gonna need, because of AI we're not gonna be able to trust the internet even less. So we're gonna need more relationships to combat it. Number two, because every channel's gonna be more saturated, we're gonna need to provide more value, more impact in those channels with a combination of probably human and AI.

you know, tools and information and processing that the first to provide impact will be the first to win the deal, right? The first to create that relationship connection will be the first to win the deal. And if you can combine both of those two things, which we'll be talking about through a bunch of my points here, that's where you really get the magic. And if you can tap into relationships and provide impact pre-customer, pre them giving you money, that will be the real power. So...

Kind of as we go through these next buckets, my first bucket, I have like four or five, excuse me, three or four predictions in this, in these next area. Um, and it's really all about relationships. And, um, like I mentioned, I think there's really two paths for organizations to grow and it all falls under the selfless advantage is number one, how do you get, how do you get in with relationships? And then number two, how do you provide impact? How do you provide value pre-customer? How do you actually help them solve a problem pre-customer?

Taylor Wells (16:47.614)
And I think the folks that do that and actually combine those two, it's magic and that's the best marketing, was when you can do both of those two things together, and you build that relationship and whatnot. And so let's go right through it. So my next one is customer advocacy, and this falls under the relationship, really relationship-led growth idea or tap into relationships. So customer advocacy, I feel is gonna be one of the most important things.

When it comes in 2024 as it as relates to demand generation, customer advocacy is getting your customers to advocate for you to refer you to help you get more customers. Essentially, part of that's customer marketing, right? How do you get your customers to expand and renew and grow with you? That's a huge part of it too. And that's actually something that demand generation can totally help, right? How do you market to your current customers to grow? But in this situation, I'm talking more about how do you get your current customers to help you get net new customers?

And this is where customer advocacy falls in. And this kind of ties back into AI, right? Like as we trust the world less, and even as there's more competition out there, how do we get our customers to help us grow more? Cause really people like don't really, well, first marketers and salespeople, this guy follow and he's actually gonna speak at an event I have coming up, Will Aikton.

He's hilarious and he has a slogan called Trust me. I'm a salesperson and I love that because maybe I'll maybe I'll take the trust me. I'm a marketer Slogan and use that but no one trusts a salesperson or marketer right because we have a biased and that and especially over The past, you know decades or whatnot We've trusting even the last because it's all been focused on growth at all cost, right? So what our customers really care about who they really trust is their peers, right? And so how do we?

leverage our customers to then help advocate. Because they're the one that won't relate. I mean, they, even when we create thought leadership, even when we create, you can always tell the bias in everything we do, right? It's all towards making us look great, making positioning our product, et cetera. So I would, I think customer advocacy is only making more and more important in next year and beyond with AI, with competition, with saturation. The people they trust the most are their customers.

Taylor Wells (19:08.246)
and their peers ultimately. So in that, a couple ideas here for you. Number one is social proof. So making sure you get reviews on other platforms, right? Getting testimonials, getting case studies, getting your customers to make sure like, hey, we had a great experience with our product. That's kind of table stakes. The next level from that is thought leadership. Making sure...

getting your customers to help you create content, right? And that's where that magic comes in of like providing value and impact is getting your customers to come on a webinar, to help you speak on a conference, right? Around a topic, not your product, but around a thought leadership topic, something that is providing value and impact and solving a problem through content. And ultimately getting them to help you create content, number one, right, providing impact, but then also,

they're gonna talk about your product, right? My favorite webinars with switching my clients are like, we'll do a panel. We'll have a couple of prospects on, we'll have a couple of customers on, and we'll be talking about a thought leadership topic, right, that values the audience, that values even the panelists they're learning. And then the product comes up, right? Because of course it does, because it has, you know, the topic has something to do with the product or maybe second or third degree away from the product, and it comes up. So then you're getting that social proof while you're providing impact.

super cool, it's magic, it's like one of the coolest ways to position your product, to provide value, and some of the best events, some of the best content, is that combination of social proof, natural social proof, right? And even just talking about this right now, naturally providing social proof, it's not contrived, it's in the moment, it's contextual, it's live, in addition to providing impact and value to thought leadership. Another thing to throw out for you under this third,

Prediction is warm intros through your community. How do you get warm intros through a referral program, through networking, through getting a warm intro from your customers? Super powerful, getting your customers to get you in the door with other customers through warm intros. Super important and worth the investment. And I've definitely seen that pay off for my clients. Awesome, number four prediction is community led growth.

Taylor Wells (21:21.302)
This is something I'm sure you've heard around, I've heard talk about, but really there's kind of two buckets in this. And there's micro communities and there's macro communities. Macro communities would be things like LinkedIn, Reddit, other social media platforms and tapping into those communities, right? Where people, you know, you're either engaging in those communities and there's ways to do it. You can just be a member of that community and providing value. Right? As a member, you can sponsor that community and do run ads, whatnot, in those types of communities.

And then you can also create your own community. And that's where the micro communities come in too. And macro and micro, the micro could also be Slack groups, could be trade shows, associations, whatnot. And in that you can be a member, you can sponsor, or you can create your own. In this framework I got from Kathleen Booth from Pavilion, and I really like it. You can either be a member, right? Of any one of these communities, the macro communities, just be a member of a social media community like LinkedIn, right? And contribute to that.

create content, connect with people, build community that way. I've built this podcast, I've built clients from that way. But also the micro communities, there's different paid and free communities out there, where there are association trade shows, trade associations, these so many micro communities out there, right? And I'm sure there's only gonna be more of them made in 2024, even more niche communities based upon folks are trying to connect, right? And really these relationships

base predictions are what people want, right? Like with the lack of trust in the internet with so many options out there, if you look at the number one way people wanna find new products, it's through their peers, it's through word of mouth, it's through community, it's through people they trust. Because that's like the best way to find a product, right? It's like, hey, this person, it's like it's tribalism at its finest. It's this person I have an affinity with, I trust them, we have similar.

standard similar expectations. They introduced me to a product. They helped me solve a problem. They introduced me to solution to a problem, etc. So it kind of goes all goes back into that. And so it's just kind of natural, right? It's going back to that what I said earlier, empathy, tapping into empathy, tapping the way the way people want to buy is through relationships, through people they trust, right? And so community is a big part of that.

Taylor Wells (23:41.914)
So yeah, this micro communities, right? The Slack groups, what not invest in those as a member, you can sponsor them or you can create your own, which is definitely the hardest. The big communities you can either be a member of, or you can also, excuse me, you can also sponsor and invest in that way as well. I'm gonna have a sip of water. Number five here is...

Strategic partnerships. So this is another form of relationships and strategic partnerships are, um, think of them as they can be referral program. That could be a co-marketing, co-selling integrations, ecosystem, app marketplaces. There's so many different ways to do strategic partnerships. And this is gonna be another phenomenal area to build, to kind of tap into this relationship led growth, right? Where other companies.

have relationships with your future customers. Think about it that way, right? And so if they have a complimentary product, if they have the same ideal customer as you, you can build a partnership with them to go to market together. The baseline is doing things, and actually going back one step further before I jump into that, think about it from an empathy standpoint. Think about putting your customer's shoes.

customers have so many options to solve a problem. They want to find, and they have, the average company has 30, it's crazy, especially larger companies, they have 250 to 300 software tools, right? Or some sort of technologies they're using. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to figure out how can my service providers, how can my software companies, how can my third parties all work together? So that it's, and work together to be more efficient, right? Like when I hire somebody, when I hire, when I buy two pieces of software,

I just don't want one plus one equals two. I want one plus one equals 2.5 or three, right? That I have this combination of tools, this combination of vendors and whatnot, that I get a better outcome because of this partnership, right? And all these tools, all these services are all working together in harmony that you get this better outcome. So that's where I think the 2.5 idea of strategic partnerships is if you can go together

Taylor Wells (25:58.206)
If your products and services can work better together, right? Through integrations, through even just co-selling where you're like, you're, you're positioning your, your sales folks are positioning the products together and, and showing like, Hey, here's all the additional benefits by using both of us together. And then introductory to that is co-marketing and co-marketing. I think is probably, especially for smaller early stage companies is, is really this table stakes, all the other ones, co-selling integrations, the app.

marketplace that's very specific to enough. If you're a tool that works off of AWS or Shopify or whatever. But the baseline, I think, is co-marketing. Co-marketing allows you to, it's kind of getting in the door. And I do tons of co-marketing for this podcast and for my events. So my podcast, I'm having guests on. That's a co-marketing initiative where

Taylor Wells (26:57.33)
I'm having them on, they're going to market it to their audience. I'm marketing to my audience and we're going to market together, right? We're creating content, we're creating marketing for our audiences together, and we're able to tap into each other's audiences together. Um, and then in 2024, I'm going to do more guest speaking and more going speaking at events and speaking on podcasts and creating content for other people's audiences. And especially if you're getting started out, I'd really recommend, um, you know, especially if you don't have a huge audience or a huge customer base, folks probably aren't going to come.

create content for your audience, right? Or they're gonna be more reluctant, especially if they're a bigger company. So in that situation, if you're trying to partner with a bigger company, offer to do all the content marketing for them, right? Offer to ultimately invest in that relationship for them, right, to start, and then maybe they can come create content for your audience, right? But all sorts of things you can do, whether it's doing events together, which is one of my favorite webinars, workshops, panels, et cetera.

create blog posts for them, create an ebook together, do an after party at a conference together, all sorts of stuff you can do, even run paid ads together, whatever it may be, there's so many different co-marketing initiatives you can do. And then once again, in that, if you can combine the impact, right, and actually provide value, that's where you can really drive tremendous value in that co-partnership, right, where it's like, oh wow, these two brands.

You're able to tap into the relationships that both brands have and you're providing impact and value. It's a sweet, sweet combination. And I'm sure we're going to see a lot of that in 2024 and beyond as people get more creative with how to drive them back and drive demand. All right. Number six. Only 10 more folks and the other ones will be much faster. So we'll get through these. Number six is.

product-led growth. So this is providing impact. And what we see with product-led growth, especially with low ACV, right, low annual contract values, is the ability to do a free trial or a free version of freemium, right, is providing impact pre-customer, providing impact before they give you money. And we're only gonna see more of that. I think we're gonna see more of that even in the service realm and even in the enterprise realm. The enterprise realm could be something like a pilot, right, where you're doing a pilot program where maybe it's really reduced cost or free

Taylor Wells (29:15.81)
to try out the product, get it in the doors, get some value, implement it, and then convert over to a paid customer. And we're gonna see a lot more of that and a lot more of that in the higher ACV realm in 2024 and beyond. Because once again, how can we provide impact the fastest? The time to value, the time to impact, the folks that do it the quickest, especially in your competitive market, right? When there's your 12 other competitors, the folks that can provide the impact the quickest.

The folks that can connect via relationships the quickest will win. And that's, if you have anything to take away from this, uh, podcast, um, those two things, and I think PLG product led growth, that concept of using your product to grow is always going to, is going to get, is going to seep more into service based businesses, right? How do you provide some sort of service, a small version, solve one problem through a mini service or mini offering, um, and to get them in the door.

and then continue to solve more problems with your paid versions, and then also the enterprise through pilot programs, through making a smaller version of your solution from there. Number seven is thought leadership and content that actually solves the problems. This is under the impact kind of bucket as well. Solving a problem through your content and thought leadership. And what I mean by this is so much thought leadership and content out there is just providing opinions.

pontificating and not really solving an actual problem in your thought leadership. And it's lazy. It's like, you know, it's not really invested in it. A lot of thought leadership has been focused on driving leads, not driving building an audience where people want to consume more of your content. How do we get people to sign up for this ebook? How do we get people to sign up for this webinar and then falling short and actually delivering value to solve a problem? So I predict our thought leadership and content will have to get better.

with AI, with a lack of trust, with saturation, your content is only gonna have to get better or you're not gonna be able to stand out. Number eight is providing impact during the selling process. And this can kind of be consultative selling, right? That concept. My father was a financial advisor. I worked with him for years. And as a fiduciary advisor, it's really all about building relationships, but it's also about providing impact.

Taylor Wells (31:39.482)
and showing that you're an expert and building that trust. Building a relationship is about obviously building a connection with somebody, but it's also about building trust too. And I think impact builds trust, right? You're like, hey, this person provided some impact so I can trust them more to provide more impact later on. And so that's where I believe in this number eight, is providing impact during the selling process. And...

Sales, once again, going back to growth at all costs, it's all about how I push people, manipulate them, push them into buying versus how do I serve, how do I build that relationship, how do I provide value? So actually in the sales process, actually them walking away with, oh man, I actually learned something in that sales process. I gotta tell you, most demo experiences, most sales interactions I have nowadays are not.

Rarely do they actually enlighten me about educate me about the problem. I have that's like table stakes for sales, right? How do they educate me? How do they let me know? How do they help me see the problem in a different light and their solution as the way to solve it, right? So that's like table stakes for sales But on top of that the next level is how do you help them solve one or two pieces of that problem, right? How do you help them solve?

a version of that problem of, oh, you know, just one thing I noticed is that maybe you should try this in your strategy, or maybe you could use this tool in addition to our tool, right? That's helping them solve another problem and positioning your problem, right? I think that combination of not only educating them about the problem, right? That's like table stakes for marketing and demand generation and sales, but number two, your product is the obvious choice to solve that problem. Number three,

is how do they walk away from every marketing and sales interaction, and especially sales, because it's such an awesome opportunity to provide a one-to-one personalized value impact experience where they're like, hey, they helped me solve a couple problems in that demo. I would love to get another call with them, right? Because they made me think about the world a different way. They may help me solve problems outside, maybe second or third degree away from their product. Once again, it's all about differentiation, folks, right? It's all about...

Taylor Wells (33:51.722)
because everything's saturated, because there are so many products, how is your marketing and sales differentiated? And sales in particular, I think is probably one of the most phenomenal. And what we're seeing the next couple of years is the folks that are differentiating their sales process will win more. And part of that is obviously being a great salesperson and educating and enlightening them on why your product is the obvious choice. But then number two, number three is how do you actually be a consultant? How do you be that trusted advisor where they want to meet with you again?

really interesting and you provide really interesting and insightful takeaways from a consultative standpoint and they want to work with you. And you're also as a salesperson, you're like the marketing is obviously the first touch you get as you work with an organization. But as a salesperson, you are you're like the first person you're like the almost the first interaction you have with the company. Right. The first really in-depth interaction.

And what I've seen is most of it falls short because it's all super selfish. People are tired of it. If you look at the stats, like Gartner did a study, 85% of people don't want to talk to a salesperson. That's not the salespeople's fault. It's the environment we've created for the salespeople. It's not because the salespeople are jerks or psychopaths or anything like that. It's because salespeople have been set up for failure. It's all about quota. It's all about closing deals, not building relationships. It's not about providing value.

and ultimately serving. And so we set them up for failure. So in these first eight points I've talked about here, taking a step back, it's really, how do we combine all these eight points? How do we, with a customer, how do we provide thought leadership on a panel with a customer, invite them on with a strategic partner so we can leverage this relationship and impact mindset? How can we get your customer or strategic partner to provide thought leadership through an ad? I got this idea from my friend, Casey Hill, who was on the podcast recently.

How do you get your partners to come on, do, create content for you and run it as an ad, right? So you're leveraging the thought leadership, you're leveraging the relationship and you're delivering it in a really unique format like an ad, which if I had anything, if I could change anything in this industry, it'd be make, how do you provide impact through ads, right? How do you provide impact through content versus most ads are just really self-focused and not about ultimately being selfless or being empathetic.

Taylor Wells (36:15.138)
Go guest speak on a strategic partner's webinar. Another way, right? You can go provide a thought leadership on somebody else's webinar or their podcast or write a blog for them. You tap into the relationship element, right? You're tapping into their audience, their relationship. You're also providing impact. Let's jump into point number nine here. I think I got this idea from Randy Fishkin from Spark Turo. He talks about the idea that because we're not gonna be able to track the buyer's journey.

we're gonna have to look at vanity metrics more. And this is really interesting and you can spend a lot of time, I recommend go watching his webinar on this, his speech he did for demand conference, really interesting. It's only getting harder to track what's successful and not successful. So we're gonna have to use vanity metrics, things that we've always over the past 10 years because of performance marketing, we've kind of shied away from. We're gonna have to use vanity metrics to kind of indicate what's working, what's not working, traffic.

leading indicators, all sorts of things that we're going to have to think outside of the box to actually see if people are going through a process because the funnel is virtually untrackable. The funnel benchmarks are kind of a joke in general because benchmarks are so there's lack of context and things are changing so fast that even what worked last year, it's be hard to predict. And then Google is moving away from cookies for Chrome browser in 2024.

Apple's only making it harder to track ad impressions. All this privacy, a lot of good things are making it harder to track what's working, especially from the digital world. And so we're gonna have to use vanity metrics, which you can spend a bunch of time about that and happy to talk more about that if you wanna reach out to me. Number 10, short form content. It will only become more popular and really good long form content will also become really popular and everything in between will only, I think will fall short.

What I mean by that short form content, we're in a time constrained world. One of my clients, Greg Brooks, throughout this idea of that, write and speak for time constrained people, right? We're time constrained, we have so much competition, so much folks trying to get our attention. So create content, and I think short form content is only gonna be much more effective. I'm actually doing a new event series, which I'll talk more about next week on the show. That's gonna be a long form.

Taylor Wells (38:38.39)
uh, event, right? 90 minutes long, but it's going to be short form segments where, um, we'll have nine speakers talking for nine minutes each on a specific topic and super fast, super efficient to kind of keep that engagement. Number one, number two, though, it taps in that long form. So it keeps people engaged long-term. So I think short form in general, if you can invest into anything, great short form content, that's really impactful. And then if you're doing long form content,

You're just gonna have to get better at it because there's just so much great long form content out there and if you are gonna do long form content, it just has to get better because people's attention spans are getting less. But people want long form. If you see the podcast consumption, if you see what not, then people want it, but it has to be really good. Short form, the barrier, you still have to be really good, but...

I think of anything invest in short form, get that right. The long form, you know, if you are gonna do it, you just have to get a lot better at it, in my opinion. Number 11 is websites are gonna get shorter. Back to the time constraint, I think time on page is gonna get less. So these big, especially in the SaaS world, they have these big websites with like hundreds of pages that no one ever views. Some of it's for SEO, I get that. But some of it also people get lost and it's cluttered and it's like, oh, I just got kind of tuned out.

especially resource pages on people's websites, drive me nuts, because it's just like, it's just this like, you know, pile of just confusing and there's no, there's no journey I'm taking people on. There's no like, the user experience is just really just garbage. So I think with once again, time constrained websites are gonna get shorter. The copy is gonna get shorter. You're gonna see a lot more one page websites out there because of this time constrained, back to this time constrained websites gonna get shorter. Number 12.

Brands will move away from focusing on generating leads through content to generate an audience first. My friend Balaji, which I also had on the show, has this concept called before the funnel content, which I love that. I think he's gonna start a podcast called before the content, before the funnel podcast on Wakeda to let everyone know about that Balaji. But he has this concept which really about owned media. Look that up. There's rented media, there's paid media.

Taylor Wells (40:56.654)
There's earned media, but owned media is this idea that you can really build your own audience. So much of B2B content, so much of B2B marketing has been about generating leads for sales. That's great. Don't get me wrong. That's awesome. But I think once again, everyone's doing that. And so super saturated and everyone's expecting salespeople to reach out and it's all optimized for leads. But the content actually isn't that great. And it's all about how do we have a good hook? How do we just ultimately crank something out and generate leads?

low intent leads to pass off to sales. And it's not about what I coined this term, subscription-based MQLs, right? MQLs, marketing and qualified leads, folks that are subscribing to your content, they're coming back for more, right? Because the content is so good, and they're coming back for more. So it's gonna be about, less about creating generating leads, right? Because content information is really prolific. You can go buy, you know, Apollo.

It's great in that area. I use Apollo and I think I get 10,000 contacts a month for like 50 bucks a month or something crazy like that. Verified contacts, verified emails that I can then reach out to people or whatever. So getting people's information is not hard and salespeople can get that anytime they want. But it's about building an audience. It's about people that wanna come back and they're gonna open up your emails, gonna listen to your podcasts, gonna come back to more webinars, gonna follow you on social media and like your content. They come back for more.

Less about generating leads, more about creating audience. It's before that funnel, right? Like, Bellagio has that cool concept before the funnel. Owned media is also this term too. Audience Plus is premiering a lot of this. Software for that, and Thinkonado, we've had them on the show earlier this year. Also really good stuff, and can be really important as you move into the next year about building the audience. Which isn't new, right? Like, newsletters and building a subscription base isn't new, but we've...

We haven't really been investing in that. I think as a whole, we've been really investing in generating leads so then sales and BDRs can go call them, not generating an audience, people are expecting to receive your email every week and wanna read it, right, and open it up every week. Number 13 is competitive ads. So like I mentioned earlier, 12, on average, SaaS company has 12 competitors, right? So you're seeing, you're probably seeing this a lot, a lot more competitive.

Taylor Wells (43:14.562)
competitor ads. And the idea of this is like a comparison, right? Like here's, you know, me versus them, right? And it goes down the list of features and here's how we compare. And I did a bunch of research on this in regards to, you know, what the laws are around it. And I recommend your marketing team does this as well. But there's actually, there's a lot of leeway and actually encouragement to create honest competitor ads and actually label them, right? Like click up.

did a ton of competitor ads recently that I saw that were, they were pretty savage for lack of a better expression going after, I forget Atlassian's product, but they were pretty intense. And you wanna have some ethics, you wanna have some best practices, but once again, everyone has a competitor. So first, what are your customers thinking? What are your prospects thinking? They're thinking, I don't know how to compare with these folks, right? Like, so first educate them on them. Like, hey,

Here's a hopefully as unbiased as possible, right? Comparison of the products and like the feature sets and how we compare. And I think we've seen a lot more of that in the past six months. And I think in 2024 and beyond, we're gonna see a ton of competitor ads. And I'm working with my clients on more competitor ads because it's just hard to compare. There's so many options out there. Every day there's a new tool and people are just kind of, I think people, in my opinion, how I'm experiencing it is I'm just

decision fatigue. I'm like, oh, there's so many options. I'm just not gonna make any decision. And so that actually, the whole ecosystem, the whole marketplace suffers when people don't have clarity. So I think competitor ads help with clarity, help educate the market on how you are different and look up the laws and the precedents that have been set for how you can put your competitor's logo in the ads, have competitive comparison landing pages where you're comparing the different features and educate the market on how you're different.

Because if you don't, people are, number one, they're gonna be like, you know, first your competitors are probably gonna do it. And so you wanna make sure you have a voice in there and provide your perspective on it. Number two, there's just so much decision fatigue, right? People don't, I'm experiencing it where it's like, oh man, there's so many different options. I'm just not making any decision at all. So we've got three more and then we're gonna wrap up here. Number 14 is kind of vertical software and services.

Taylor Wells (45:40.222)
So once again, everyone has 12 competitors, if not more, especially for new folks who are going to market early stage companies, where I think we're gonna see more vertical products, vertical services out there. What that means is somebody that's serving a specific niche, a specific industry, and not horizontal, right? Where you're serving everyone, but you're focused on one industry and service.

And I know for my business, I'm thinking about that, right? How do I niche down on my demand gen consulting services? How do I focus and be the only person in this one industry? So when I go to market and I do those competitor ads or when I compare, it's like, wow, this is, he's like, not only can you, does all of your marketing and sales get better because you're just so focused on industry, but your product gets better too, because it's focused on one particular industry. And you can always add other industries later, right? You can always expand, but.

You know, I think it's counterintuitive to have a small TAM, small total addressable market, right? It's counterintuitive to want to like say no, because we're like, oh, you know, especially when you're a small company, like for me, I'm like, I don't want to say no to somebody that's outside of my target market. But if you do want to grow, build something big and make it efficient and have the best marketing, have the best sales, have the best product, I think we're going to see more vertical industry specific niche, really focus on one particular segment of the market.

So when they do go to market, it's that much more efficient and also their product is so tailored No pun intended to that particular industry that there's just you're the obvious choice, right? There's no one else in that space And I think that is that is the future in so many ways if you're going to market especially with a product that they're saturated If you're like building a CRM system if you're building if you're starting a CRM company I recommend you don't create a CRM company. That's like, you know

horizontal, right, where you're serving everyone, unless you just have like, unless you have something that's so much superior to HubSpot and Zoho and Salesforce, that you're just the most, you know, the dominating CR, you just have something so unique. But maybe you're a CRM company for, you know, bookkeepers in North America, or you're a CRM company for...

Taylor Wells (47:52.166)
you know, whatever the industry or niche is that no one else is in that you can make that product really tailored to that one specific company makes your marketing so much easier and sales so much easier. And then I think makes your product easier as well. I think we'll see a lot more of that in 2024 and beyond. Number 15 is content can get more niche down to as well. If you're familiar with the idea of account based marketing, account based marketing is the idea that you're creating content and marketing and sales is really focused on a target account. Right.

So there's this idea of one to one, one to few, one to many, what do those mean? One to many is you are, that's kind of just general like broad marketing, right? I'm marketing to this entire segment. ABM is really just great marketing and sales, or you're really focused on that specific company and everything you do is all around them, right? The content you create even has their logo in the ad, or you're talking to that specific person in that ad or that outreach and you do tons of research and the thought leadership is super customized.

to that company. I think AI is gonna help with this and make this a lot easier to create content that's super niche to those particular companies. And I think we're gonna see that we're gonna come, the personalization of content, of marketing, of sales is gonna be more ABM in the future because that's the only way you're gonna stick out. Your ad, if it's generic, if it's talking to everyone, you're talking to no one. If you're talking to that specific company and you're providing value to that specific company.

It's really unique. No one's doing that, right? So I think content similar to your TAM is gonna get niche down, right? You're gonna have to focus more on the specific niche, these specific companies, and everything's gonna become more ABM, everything's become more account-based marketing, and it's gonna become smaller, right? You're gonna be focused on these specific companies, this specific industry, because not only will your product be the obvious choice, because no one else, you're in the options of one, right, at the RFP.

But also your content is going to be so unique because you're the only one who's creating content for that audience with that specific message, with a specific value, et cetera. Number 16 is one of my favorites. And I think something I've learned, especially, I think growth hacking is probably where this falls in. But it's really this idea of how do you use counterintuitive tactics for different channels? For example, instead of asking for a demo in an outbound email, how do you?

Taylor Wells (50:18.238)
Um, uh, invite them to a webinar, right? So instead of like going in and be like, Hey, here's our product. Here's our service, whatever. Just invite them to a webinar, um, invite them to content. Right? So you're using a channel that was usually is usually for sales, right? Everyone is expecting outbound cold email to be about a sales proposal. And I'm not saying that bad. I'm not saying you can't do that. Well, that's only become really, really hard. Um, especially over the last couple of years with deliverabilities and competition, et cetera.

How do you do it in a way that's tasteful and invite them to content, provide value? Even one step further to that, which I haven't really explored too much on my own yet, but I'm going to, especially in 2024, is how does that outbound email have impact in it? So what if it's like, here's three tips for how you solve a problem I think you have, right? And you're actually solving, helping them provide value. Think of it as like a newsletter or some sort of lead magnet, but you're delivering that through outbound.

So once again, it's taking a channel that's usually used for that, but then using it in a different way. Another one could be like running ads, right? Running people ads, people have seen, and most ads are just, once again, it's all about the brand, right? Or it's all about generating leads, and it's very typical, everyone's expecting that. But what they're not expecting is a thought leadership ad. And we've seen this on LinkedIn, right? Thought leadership ads is a new feature they came out with as a side note. They reduce the organic reach of...

of everyone and then release this new feature around the same time of thought leadership ads. Kind of funny, definitely intentional, I'm sure. But the idea is you create an organic post, right? Just a post that you're like, hey, here's 10 best practices and it's about thought leadership, it's about providing value in a post, right? Or any post, it can be any post, but the ones that work really well is a post that's actually interesting, it provides value.

And then you can run ads against it. You can boost it, right? You can basically promote that thought leadership ad. And it's so unexpected because you're like, oh wow, wait, this is a post or is this an ad? And it says it's sponsored right at the top. But when you read them, you're like, oh wow, this is so interesting. And I'm like, I've met people through this. I've like, I had Casey Hill, who was one of my guests on my podcast, ran an ad for Active Campaign.

Taylor Wells (52:39.182)
That was a thought leadership ad. And I was like, this is so great. You're providing value through an ad. And it made a connection, right? And really powerful. So I think number 16 is really all about how do you go to a channel in a counterintuitive way? Use counterintuitive tactics in those channels to stand out. And I think we're only gonna get more creative in a tasteful way, right? When it's going back to relationships and going back to impact, how do we go to these channels?

and do it in a way that is so unexpected, right? Where you're just mixing, you're mixing tactics, right? Is what you're doing. You're like taking one tactic over here and then you're delivering it in a new way, a fresh way. Hugely impactful. I've seen over the past couple of years and I think we're gonna get more into that. So we've gone through a lot today. Thanks for sticking with me. We've gone through at least 16 different tactics. A lot of things I think that stick out to me is once again, with the world of AI, saturation, so much competition.

Get back to relationships and get back to impact. If you're fostering relationships through your customers, through advocates, through communities, through strategic partnerships, doing those things in and you're also providing impact through content, through a miniature version of your product, through a sales experience that's super powerful and impactful and actually providing value, you're gonna win more. And it's worked for me personally in my business, it's worked for my clients, it's worked through my career.

So I think we're gonna get more into that. I think AI is gonna help us, right? Do more of that better. I hope we're gonna create, people are creating tools that are gonna help us do those things and facilitate those things better. But the folks that ultimately can make the connection through a relationship and provide value, the time to value, the time to relationship, you can shorten that, you're gonna win, especially in a competitive space. Obviously have a great product. Obviously provide the product actually works. And I think that's where marketing and sales can help from a demand gen standpoint. Like, hey,

We have all these competition out there. Feeding that information back to product can be really helpful, right? Doing market studies, how to make the product better and that's like a no-brainer in some ways. I like continue to make your product better and that's how you'll go to market even better, right? And how you'll generate demand even better. But in addition to that, everyone's making their product better. And so how do you make your marketing and sales a differentiator? And you can do that through these 16 ideas.

Taylor Wells (55:05.558)
going back to ultimately the selfless advantage, right? How do you put yourselves in their shoes through empathy? And then how do you serve unconditionally? How do you provide value with zero expectation? If you go in with that heart, with that mindset, you'll create, you'll do awesome marketing, you'll do awesome sales, you'll grow more efficiently, and win more in 2024 and beyond. So thanks everyone for listening, really appreciate you tuning in. I know this was a long episode, but I hope it was of value.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. Next week, we're gonna do my final episode for the year when we talk about what's in store for GTM News and me personally and where I'm going in the next year. Still figuring it out, so hopefully I'll figure it out by then, but yeah, thanks everyone for listening and we'll see you next week in next week's episode.