Technology (AI, Automation) Vs. Humanity Where should entrepreneurs put their $1 for marketing on in 2020?
2020 will reach the highest levels of contravention:
Elon Musk:
“Mark my words, AI is far more dangerous than nukes. Far.”
Mark Schaefer:
“The most Human Company wins”
IDC:
“big data and business analytics will surpass $210 billion at a CAGR of 11.9% in two years.”
Many of the most successful entrepreneur guests on my Reach or Miss show are leading the changes – either towards more technology or for much more humanity in the way entrepreneurs and any businesses should approach their customers.
I collected some of the clearest voices that represent one of these two directions. Check it out and try to find the answer to your entrepreneurship for 2020. Where should you put your attention and budgets?
The ‘Pro Humanity’ voices
Humanity is the King for entrepreneurial success
Mark Schaefer “Marketing is sick right now. It’s too tech-centric instead of human-centric… If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.”
Most passionate about
- I’m a person who is always looks forward, so I’m always in the process of reinvention. I tend to be almost obsessed with the big problems in our business. The question I’m wrestling with now is that everywhere I go, marketing seems to be stuck. There are a few symptoms:
- People are over whelmed by technology in marketing
- They are over using technology in marketing
- They’re stuck in ineffective patterns
The idea that I have is that marketing is too tech-centric instead of human-centric. We don’t want to talk with our customers anymore; we just want to monitor them on Twitter. We automate everything and we are loosing our hearts, our souls, and our way.
Marketing is sick right now!
What is marketing, according to Mark?
Get out and talk to customers. The truth is out there.
Marketing is finding un-met and under-served needs and creating demand to those needs in a unique way. Hopefully by establishing an emotional connection.
I love working with entrepreneurs and startup communities; I love their energy. But the biggest frustration I have is that marketing is almost always overlooked. Startups and entrepreneurs are in love with an idea, or with a business model.
They think that marketing is DIY (Do It Yourself), they think that they can read some blog posts and do it. But marketing is about finding and acquiring customers. If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.
Marketing is HARD! It’s really hard. But you’ve got to address it. And if you aren’t a natural marketer or trained in marketing, you’ve got to get help! Because marketing is really the centerpiece of your business; no matter how good your idea is, no matter how much you are in love with it, if you don’t have customers you are not going to have a business!
Ramon Ray’s best advice for entrepreneurial business success: “I’m all about relationship building.”
From a young age, I was fascinated by technology. When I became an adult, it stayed with me and I discovered the Internet. So, I’m a geek…
However, for me, my one key success factor it’s the ability to build genuine relationships with people and to let people KNOW, LIKE, and TRUST me. That’s the absolute key to my success: Relationship, Relationship, Relationship.
Shama Hyder: “The thing that helps me and really motivates me on a daily basis is that, I love to contribute, I love to give back. I feel like generosity is a strategy.”
I started my company when I was 22, right after my graduation. Part of not having a job in an organization then was that, there weren’t many organizations that specialized in social media and digital media. And at the same time, it was also the time of recession in the US and jobs were even more limited than usual.
I started with digital marketing. I saw the difference between us, and the traditional organizations that had to pivot and start learning the digital language. The fluency that is required has always been very native to us.
I love what we are doing today; we work with B2B clients around the world, delivering everything from launches to influential marketing, and digital PR. We combine passion and delivering, so every day is a mix of technology and communication.
My best advice to any entrepreneur about approaching customers is always to treat customers like they were the first. At some point in any entrepreneur’s career, things that were challenging become a lot easier, and it’s very important to keep innovating and to keep having that beginner mindset, to celebrate successes and to treat every customer like there were the first.
We live in such a world where, rather than trying to hide, it’s better to be as transparent as possible. I don’t treat any of my advice as a secret; I educate my competitors about new things. I always share.
The ‘Pro Technology’ voices
Technology is the King for entrepreneurial success
Mellissah Smith – “Always learn, have a mentor, be open to feedback, and be brave enough to take a risk, innovate, and invest in technology to become better at what you’re doing.”
Mellissah is the founder of Robotic Marketer an innovative, modern and AI based technology that develops and consists of marketing workshops and extensive strategies:
I’m one of those people who are very passionate about many things. Right now, I’m involved with my little startup, called Robotic Marketer. About four years ago, I decided to develop a robot that will help clients optimize their marketing departments. Today, I found out that one of the companies will be buying 10,000 marketing strategies from us over the next twelve months. I’m super excited but also exhausted.
It started with our own needs in my marketing firm, Marketing Eye, which is a leading small- to medium-sized business marketing firm in Australia and the US. We have quite a big team of marketing experts who write the marketing strategy for a client, which is a major part of the role in our company. So, I wrote about how automatic marketing would work and how it could develop marketing strategies without a human. I worked with a development team that developed the technology, and today it’s live.
Mellissah’s Mountain
I have a business mountain that I’m looking to conquer. I never thought it would be possible and it was never my dream but when it became a reality, it made me think differently: to have a business with a one-billion-dollar market cap. It’s really something that I’d never thought about but, with this technology company, things have suddenly changed.
Kevin L. Jackson “It’s all about information and about knowledge. You have to know people to communicate with people. Cloud Computing is a platform for collecting information and delivering information.”
I started Gov Cloud Networks in 2013. After I retired from the Navy, I worked as a corporate executive for many years. During that time, I proved my expertise in applying advanced technology to seminal intractable business challenges. That often led to the development of Nobel Internet Phased Information Brokerage Businesses Models that would interact with mobile devices.
I was doing a lot of work with the military, the government, and the intelligence community; there were the only people that had these large global networks and had the money and the urgency to actually build and deploy the solutions that I was thinking of.
But eventually, all that turned into Cloud Computing, and my ideas became commercially buyable.
After that, I was reputably urged to start my own business providing integrated social media and cloud computing, and cybersecurity consultancy. This was targeted to organizations that wanted to leverage advanced technology.
The meaning of cloud for business
It’s all about information. Today everything is about knowledge. You have to know people to communicate with people. The largest businesses on earth are about identifying information sources.
Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are about information exchange, and the platform that social media ride on is a cloud computing platform. If you think about banks, the largest bank in the world is a virtual bank, PayPal, that is built on top of a cloud. If we think about blockchain, Bitcoin is built on top of a cloud, and it’s all about managing information and data.
Kevin’s customers
Today we are proud to partner with many global leaders like AT&T, Dell, Erickson, Bosch, Citrix, and IBM, but the common driver for all of them is how to become or maintain their global leadership.
Every business is about addressing the customers’ needs and wants. Entrepreneurs fail when they stop listening to their customers’ wants and needs.
You need to understand your marketplace, but not only to tell what your idea was but to listen to them. In today’s world, you can broadcast, but you can also use social media to listen.
Resa Gooding: “In less than a year, I became number two in the market. It happened because I was partnering with a platform for marketing automation and online marketing”
Most passionate about
I’m originally from Trinidad and moved to Israel following my love. I studied Statistics in the university. I worked in statistics with the government here.
When I came to Israel, I was not sure which business direction should I take and decided to focus on marketing where I can combine two of my skills, statistics with my English.
So, I got involved with marketing. Worked with the big brands like Motorola and Apple on their in-store marketing throughout the world. I did it for eight years.
With time, I saw the shift and the need among startups to get online, so I started to help them. I became a specialist mainly by partnering with HobSpot offering companies to use their platform for marketing automation and online marketing.
I started to learn and follow all the marketing gurus like Mark Schafer (who was a guest on this show), Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and the like. So, I learned what it takes to build a business and a brand online and translated it and started to work with agencies for the last five or six years. Two years ago, I established my own agency – CacaoMedia.
Today we help companies with their marketing automation and CRM working as partners of HobSpot. Our customers are both startup and traditional companies. You will be amazed how many companies are still working with Excel sheets and are not very open to marketing automation.
“Each company need to be able to decide when (and when not) to have a marketing automation system.”
So, after reading these voices of successful entrepreneurs, what do you think? Technology (AI & Automation) Vs. Humanity – who wins?
Where should you, entrepreneurs put your $1 for marketing on, in 2020?
AS I see it, there is a clear winner between the two.
I found this battle fascinating and a must for successful entrepreneurs.
But yet, there is a clear winner! Not by my judgment. By the Judgment of our technology experts:
When I asked Resa what her key success factor, her answer was:
“I think it’s my ability to be charismatic and personable; I get along very well with everybody. I don’t judge people; I give everything and everyone a chance. This is probably my biggest strength and my superpower.”
Mellissah’s best advice to entrepreneurs is to make sure you put the customer first
“The most important piece of advice for any entrepreneur, Mellissah told me in her interview, is to understand the purpose of the customer’s business and what the market really needs.
And Kevin L. Jackson’s key success factor was:
“The answer might surprise you – it’s my three children that taught me what the important things in life are, and that you can never stop being a parent.
When I take it to business, it is never to forget your business partners and never stop thinking about helping your clients.”
So, when the most technological guys among my successful entrepreneur guests say their winning factor in their entrepreneurship is being human. humanity won.
Of course, the technological revolution is bigger than any other revolution humankind went through, and it’s what allows all of us, entrepreneurs, to succeed today.
However, as long as we are serving human beings, humanity always wins.
I wish you all, my reachers a wonderful year and to reach your hops, challenges and dreams in 2020.
