B2B Marketers on a Mission
Ep. 156: How Video Uplevels Every Part of the Customer Journey
How Video Uplevels Every Part of the Customer Journey
In the complex B2B ecosystem where sales cycles can be long, video can effectively tell a company’s story and differentiate its offerings from the competition. With new technology and AI, video production doesn’t have to be a daunting or gargantuan task and should be leveraged by more B2B companies.
That’s why we’re chatting with B2B marketing expert and senior executive Jessica Deckinger (Operating Partner, Clearhaven Partners) about how B2B companies can use videos to improve every part of the customer journey. During our conversation, Jessica dispels the common misconception that video production is a huge endeavor that requires specialized skills and expensive resources. She also highlights which pitfalls to avoid, how to get internal buy-in, and how videos can impact the customer journey across different stages.
https://youtu.be/PAaYdydOd5g
Topics discussed in episode
[1:22] What is holding B2B SaaS companies back from producing videos?
[5:04] Some of the pitfalls that B2B marketers should avoid
[8:47] How to avoid cramming too much information into one video
[12:35] How to address internal push back for leveraging videos
How videos positively impact the different stages of the consumer journey:
[16:43] Purchasing
[18:05] Onboarding and usage
[20:12] Renewal and growth[26:32] Jessica’s point of view on the role of AI in video production
[33:15] Actionable tips for leveraging video in B2B marketing:
• Compartmentalize information into digestible chunks
• Map your communication barriers and address the most painful points first
• Understand the video readiness of your teams
• Leverage existing assets and content
• Assess your technology and determine which AI is the right one for you to use
Companies and links mentioned
Transcript
SPEAKERS
Jessica Deckinger, Christian Klepp
Christian Klepp 00:00
Welcome to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today I’ll be talking to Jessica Deckinger. She’s a senior executive with diverse and extensive experience across integrated brand marketing, product, digital strategy, insights and analytics, finance and operations. She’s valued as a strategic thinker with proven ability to lead cross functional teams, develop talent and influence team members at all levels of the organization. She’s also known for performing with a balance of financially based business thinking, exceptional creative vision and ability to adapt quickly to any team in a fast paced working environment. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketer’s mission is. Jessica Deckinger, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here.
Jessica Deckinger 00:49
Thanks, Christian. I really appreciate you having me on as a guest.
Christian Klepp 00:52
Fantastic, fantastic. So let’s just hop right into it, because this is a topic I think that is not only pertinent to B to B marketers, specifically in the SaaS space, but to their sales counterparts as well. And so what am I talking about here, Folks? I’m talking about how video up levels every part of the customer journey. So Jessica, why don’t we kick off the conversation with this question, what do you think is still holding a lot of B to B SaaS companies back from producing videos?
Jessica Deckinger 01:22
Thank you so much. I mean, great place to start. Look. I think video is this feels like this really big, scary thing to a lot of folks. You feel like you have to be specialized and be you know Steven Spielberg and be able to do incredible, powerful things you know yourself as a creator, to be able to tackle video. I think many people feel that acutely. They kind of feel intimidated by the source of like, how am I going to do something that that really breaks through, feels brand worthy, feels beautiful, and how can I make a good video? So that’s definitely something holding people back. I think the other part is really just that it’s always been very painful to produce video. And I know that anyone who’s a B to B marketer, sales person, commercial person in this area is going to resonate with that. It has always been super painful. You know, you had to produce and hire a crew, and it was expensive. It took too long, and then, honestly, by time you got everyone’s opinions, everyone wanted to comment on the blue back screen, and the way someone tilted their head and whatever you did in the video itself, it always winds up being that, once you put it out there, it’s already outdated, right? Like it just feels unwieldy, or felt unwieldy to this point, and that, I think those are the two biggest pain points that have kept people back from really taking advantage of what’s one of the most powerful ways to communicate.
Christian Klepp 02:41
Absolutely, absolutely, you know, having produced a couple of like videos myself in my career, I can truly relate to that and how, yeah, it can be a painful logistics exercise. I’m not gonna lie,
Jessica Deckinger 02:54
and expensive
Christian Klepp 02:55
And expensive. And to your point, it’s this constant pressure that it has to be this Hollywood style produced video, right? Like you said, Steven Spielberg or James Cameron is going to show up and direct it, right? But, um, that that probably like, begs another question, like, does it have to be that style of video?
Christian Klepp 03:15
Yeah, absolutely. The technology aspect of it is really an important or a key component, right? And we’re going to touch on that later on in the conversation, but I’m going to segue us on to the next point, which is again, on this topic of producing videos for the different stages of the customer journey. What are some of the pitfalls that you think B to B marketers should avoid, and what should they be doing instead?
Jessica Deckinger 03:15
I mean, I think one of the wonderful things about the time we’re in now technologically, is that it doesn’t have to be that now, it really doesn’t. I think there’s so many creator tools. You know, I’m a board member of a company called SundaySky. I think they do a spectacular job of enabling not just static creation process, but also personalization at scale, like really taking video, making it easy to produce, easy to make it look really high quality, easy to customize and personalize, and then spread and scale effectively in real time, so that you can take advantage of this incredible medium and not feel restrained by that creative process, the production process. There is so much out there now that enables that to happen. You know, I think there’s also value in thinking about the personalization side, right? Like, really, nobody wants a… unless they’re going to, you know, logging on to Netflix and watching a film that was produced for mass audience. They’re not expecting something that’s mass when you’re marketing, right? No one wants mass that way. I mean, in essence, also, even when you get onto something like Netflix, it’s personalized in a way, because you’re getting content, hopefully that’s more towards your liking. But the level of expectation around personalization has ramped up so dramatically, and so I think the software, the capabilities we have now to do that, to execute on that, have made it much more accessible for everybody.
Jessica Deckinger 05:04
I mean, I think one of the biggest pitfalls is thinking about, you know, like trying to make video solve all the problems. I think you have to think about where you add the most value with video. Thinking about onboarding, acquisition, where are the most painful parts of your journey, customer experience, you know, where are the parts that you’re feeling the most pain, and then laser focusing on those so that it becomes a really pragmatic, you know, exercise, and you’re not kind of like just trying to blanket, do everything for everyone all the time. You can, with the technology that’s available now, but really thinking about where is the biggest pain in your acquisition, onboarding experience journey, and then using video as a tool to enable better experience there. Because, frankly, I think, you know, I mean, there’s a ton of data around this. Like, one of the things I think is really interesting is that, if you think about kind of how our human brain works, video is processed. There’s a study that showed that it was processed 64,000 times faster and had a 90% plus recall when you see something in video versus read something in text or hear something in audio. And you know, I think that is a really powerful stat. And when you think about your most painful pain point, bringing something up the curve that quickly, with both the processing and capability of the end user and the retention of the end user, there’s a potential to make really big leaps and bounds and have really big ROI on fixing that process first. And so I think that’s a pitfall that people do fall into, is they try to fix everything at once, but the potential to really fix the most painful thing and bring it so far up the curve is pretty, pretty phenomenal.
Christian Klepp 06:41
Absolutely, absolutely. You just reminded me of a project that was involved with a couple of years ago where, well, let’s just for lack of a better description, the client tried to cram every piece of information into two minutes, right? And at the end…
Jessica Deckinger 06:58
I think that’s a common problem. I don’t think that’s a pain point just for you.
Christian Klepp 07:02
No, no, no, it’s I think it’s a recurring trend. And I think the objective, to your point, the objective of the exercise, is people, this is not meant to be an instruction manual, right? Try to think of this and, there might be a different analogy. This is just the one I like to use. Just think of this like a teaser trailer. Have you ever watched a teaser trailer that was five minutes long?
Jessica Deckinger 07:23
I mean, there’s a reason for that, right? Because you can hook people very quickly. And I think the to get back to our first point about what’s holding people back. You know, there’s something about the capacity to create bite size pieces of information. And frankly, I think it’s important now Millennials are the biggest buyers of everything, coming up next in the queue, you know, whether it’s software or services or products, and they’re in the prime of their careers, right? And they’re thinking about bite sized content because they are more digitally native. You know, they are… They have been fed bite sized content, and know the value of it and appreciate the value of their time, and want to be, you know, respected and not kind of like expected. To your point, read an entire brochure of content, or watch an entire brochure of content in one video. And I think the platforms that are available now enable us to create as marketers, as commercial people, you know, those bite sized chunks, because we can do it more efficiently, and it’s not going to be this huge production that we talked about in the beginning of the conversation.
Christian Klepp 08:24
Absolutely, absolutely. You just made me think of another question, and it’s really on this topic of having a teaser trailer rather than a five minute short film. How do you deal with that kind of pushback? Because I’m sure you’ve dealt with this before, where folks want to produce a video and they just want to cram everything under the sky into that two or three minutes. How do you go to these people and say, Hey, listen, let’s not do that.
Christian Klepp 08:47
yeah, yeah, we used to…
Jessica Deckinger 08:47
I mean, it’s hard. You tapped on a good point, which is that everybody has opinions about creative. I always joke, as a marketer that the two most painful things are people have comments on words and colors, right? Like, I don’t like the blue, it reminds me my childhood bathroom. Or that word evokes, you know, a bad feeling for me. And it’s always interesting as a marketer to navigate that, and I joke about that, but it does. It is representative of a larger thing, which is that when you’re creating a piece of creative content, there are going to be lots of opinions. One of the ways to combat that is this kind of thinking about empowering your team with operational efficiency tools that allow you to create things at scale, because you can kind of make everybody happy that way, right? You can create multiple pieces of content rapidly. AI enables that more than ever, you know, being able to rapidly iterate so that, like, even if you do wind up having a hard time pushing back on the massive content, you know, direction, you can both create a large piece of content and slice it and dice it and make everybody happy. And so I think the software that’s enabling video creation at scale and personalization at scale, like SundaySky that I mentioned earlier, I think it’s… those are the kinds of things that will create empowerment with marketers that we’ve never had before. I mean, it is doing it now I use that tool. I think there are many tools out there, but it’s great to have that level of empowerment yourself as a decision maker in that role, because it is really hard when you feel at the mercy of someone’s, you know, opinion, weighing in on a piece of creative content that’s going to hold you back from getting your job done. That feels frustrating, I think, to a lot of folks,
Jessica Deckinger 09:06
Smiling. I hope it’s not that frustrating to you.
Christian Klepp 09:46
No, no, no. Well, it’s just, it’s just evoking these memories of like, you know, everybody’s, everybody’s a copywriter, everyone, the creative director, and then the old decision by committee and opinion is cases, right? So, but, yeah, no, you brought up such a good point, and I totally agree with that, I think, to a certain extent. And we can jam on this a little bit further later on in the conversation, that technology might help to to break the tie so called right to give people like what they want, but also in a way that’s relevant, first and foremost to the customer at the different stages of the journey, right? Because I’ve learned this the hard way, that getting internal consensus is one thing, but then if you put it out into the market and it flops, then that internal consensus means nothing.
Jessica Deckinger 11:22
Right. And you lose trust if that happens too sometimes, yeah, and I think having the analytics around the performance of the assets is critical and the capability to test and fast fail is critical. And that, like trying to do it old school, where you’re producing with a large you know that Spielberg style production, I think actually hinders your ability to build trust and credibility in your own organization. Because if you do produce something and it’s really expensive and time consuming, and you put it out there and it flops, where do you go from there? So you’re kind of like shooting the moon every time you want to make something, versus being able to kind of fast fail and iterate and AB test. Hey, let’s test this with this audience and this with that audience and see how it performs. And having analytics around it, which is another critical reason, you have to have a tool that will give you analytics, like I think you have to have a metric way to measure now, I’m sure you’re seeing this too. Everyone wants to measure everything. And for people in brand awareness building, this is like the most agonizing thing, because some brand awareness things are hard to measure, but not less valuable. And I think, but I think being able to kind of, as technology evolves and allows us to measure more things, the easier it will be for us to navigate when we’re talking with folks and stakeholders who want to measure everything.
Christian Klepp 12:35
Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely right. You brought up some of this already in the past couple of minutes. But how do you deal with internal pushback, like, say, from senior management who doesn’t know much about producing a video, and because they don’t know much about it, they don’t think that this should be done.
Jessica Deckinger 12:53
Yeah, I mean, I think, look. We call it, I call it video readiness, like I think there is, there’s a level, a degree to which people are video ready or not. I think there are kind of three ways to address that. When folks are not video ready yet, they’re like, I don’t really believe it. I don’t know how you’re going to do it. I don’t understand it. I think you have to start with data. In fact. I mean the fact that that 90% retention was a neuroscience research piece, like, there is data to show how powerful video can be. I think there’s some data to show how powerful video has been for other companies. And I think, you know, that’s a great starting point. I think the second part is thinking about presenting the how you’re going to get it done efficiently is a great barrier breaker. You know, one of the biggest fears, I think was that first thing we touched on, which is, oh, my god, is this gonna cost me a million dollars? And even if you told me it’s gonna work, how is it gonna get done? I think creating a believer is about having the data, showing the process, and then talking about the potential result is the third part, which is, you know, when you think about the part of the journey you’re trying to influence, looking at what’s out there in the market, and showing how you can rise above the noise, perform above competitors, show up with more personalization, create stickier customers. All of that is, is just, is in support of the why it matters, how you’re going to do it right then it’s what it’s going to deliver. And I don’t think you have to be wild and say, Oh, we’re going to acquire at a 50% higher rate or whatever, you know, I think. But I do think setting the bar for what we should expect to see and measure and be able to show out of this is pretty important, and that has worked really well for me with pushback. That kind of three pillar approach, I mean, frankly, helps with almost anything. Because I think, like, that’s how many minds work is they want to understand the why, the how and the what. And I think those three questions, if you can answer them, it tends to push people towards being a believer, or at least suspension of disbelief, which is part of the what you need to get moving forward. And I think if someone is like dead set, that it’s not going to work, that. It’s a much harder nut to crack obviously.
Christian Klepp 15:03
Just judging from the answer you’ve been giving in the past couple of minutes, you’ve clearly had this conversation with someone before. (laugh)
Jessica Deckinger 15:11
I mean, I think we all have, not just about video, but about anything. And I think as you grow in your career, learning about managing, up, managing, you know, horizontally, managing down, are all parts of that growth. And if you’re lucky, and I’ve been fortunate to have very talented, qualified, thoughtful leaders that I’ve worked under, you know, you see that, and you can echo it, because those behaviors and thinking about being calm, logical, you know, in your approach to getting buy in, hopefully we’re all lucky enough to see that, you know, do as I do, not as I say, but I’ve been fortunate, so I practice what I preach in that area as well, just trying to, kind of like, not get defensive when someone’s coming at me, pushing back hard on something. I think video is one of those things I’ve been pushed back on many times. So I’ve learned,
Christian Klepp 16:05
Yeah, absolutely.
Jessica Deckinger 16:06
But, you know…
Christian Klepp 16:08
Let me just quickly recap that, because I think it’s worth repeating for the benefit of the audience. So you were talking about having the data showing the process, and if you don’t have the results already, show how you are going to get the results and what the results are going to be.
Jessica Deckinger 16:21
Right.
Christian Klepp 16:22
I’m going to move us on to the next question. So basically, from your professional experience, how can video directly and positively impact the customer journey? And if you can provide examples where relevant, that’d be great. So for three parts, right? So for purchasing, onboarding and usage, and renewal and growth, and I’m happy to repeat.
Jessica Deckinger 16:43
Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the biggest things are thinking about purchase, right? You have to tell a story that’s going to differentiate and share more about your whatever it is you’re trying to influence purchase for. And if you think about static content, right, not just what I said earlier around, like video being more engaging, but I think it gives you the capacity to tell a really meaningful portion of your story really effectively through multiple mediums. So you can kind of incorporate all different kinds of learning styles in that purchase decision. When I go out there, I don’t love static ads. I don’t learn by reading. I learn by human interaction, like I’m that kind of learner. And look, I think one of the great things about the world we live in now is that we recognize there are many different learning styles. There are people who are auditory learners, visual learners, people who are human interaction learners. There are people who learn when they say it. And I think, you know, having all of the mediums you can incorporate into video enable that decision to be much more effective, because you can really get the message across to multiple audiences or multiple types of learners in your audience, really effectively. That’s the first thing. And then the second one, can you repeat the second parts of the question?
Christian Klepp 18:01
Yeah, absolutely. The second part of the question is about onboarding and usage.
Jessica Deckinger 18:05
Oh, yeah, big one, big one, which is, I think that, look, technology is accelerating. The amount of things we have to know in a day is accelerating. Think about how many passwords you have to know in a day. I know there are tools to keep these things, but really, the amount of process, the amount of technical savvy, the amount of information we have to process, enable and put into use in a day, is more so when you’re getting someone to onboard onto your service, software, technology, physical product, consumer product, name,your thing, financial services instrument, you as the owner and seller of that good service, whatever it is, have more burden, because you have to enable learning in a deeper, more sticky way. Well, we just talked about 90 plus percent retention using video. I think the fact that you can… and we talked about the learning styles, the fact that you can teach people in a way they can understand and help them retain better is really powerful, and I think it’s a miss. It’s a miss not to be leveraging video in an onboarding so I just had this happen, actually. I just… was, I bought a new phone, and I got sent I got, like, you know, think about the IKEA version of this, right? I got a five page instruction manual with the phone. I was like, I’m not reading this. It feels like IKEA, I’m not gonna put this together. I’m not gonna go to do this. That’s not how I learned, right? So I went on YouTube and watched a video, and it was very powerful for me, because I was able to kind of like, Oh, I get it now, I see where the thing is, and I get them set up in the button and the thing, and that was a user created video. But I think if companies can harness that power, we’re all teaching ourselves more this way. Now, right? Like, look at younger generations. This is how they learn. This is how they evolve and grow. And I think, you know, it’s a really, potentially impactful platform to be able to personalize a video to the person, using data, explaining the thing in a way that they can understand their own learning style, and it’ll be sticky and create retention. So to me, it’s a really powerful customer onboarding tool, video.
Christian Klepp 18:06
Yeah, absolutely okay. And then the third part was renewal and growth.
Jessica Deckinger 20:12
I mean, nowadays, if you’re not talking to me as your customer and letting me know how valuable I am, me Jessica, I really don’t… I’m not going to be loyal to you. I’m going to be loyal to the next best thing. I think you… customers have to feel valued, and have to feel individually valued now in order to give you the right to keep them, you know like it is a right to be kept by a customer these days, because there are many, many options in every single category you can think of, and it’s not just about the quality of your product, it’s about the experience of the customer. And again, to that teaching thing, when you’re onboarding someone, the keeping them tied in is about recognizing how valuable they are, making them feel seen. I’m seeing this more with smaller startup brands where they’re doing this, where you, kind of, like, you buy something, they send you a note from the CEO to you, like, I think it’s really nice. It’s it’s hard to scale unless you have a software solution if you’re a larger organization. When you have like, five people and you’re a startup, it’s easier to do when you’re a Kickstarter or something. But I think that’s where the software part comes into play, is that you can scale personalization. Can scale that retention capability. It’s just so critical now to retaining your customers.
Christian Klepp 21:24
Absolutely, absolutely. I wanted to go back to something you said with… it was talking about, you were talking about learning on YouTube, right? Like, rather than reading this very long instruction manual for your new phone, you went on YouTube to look something up. And I mean that one in itself, I think, is living proof of the power of leveraging video as opposed to the written word. And I’m not saying, and I shouldn’t be saying this as a copywriter, but, like, but I’m not saying that the written word is not useful, right? Because all videos had started as a script at some point, right? But the point here is the attention span, the time and the speed with which to convey and dispense that information, right? I mean, it’s another great example is, I think couple of months ago, I had problem with my garage door, like it just wouldn’t close right. All those remote controls, you know, where you push the button, it comes down, and you’re like, and it’s not working, and it keeps bouncing back up. And that’s not a great problem to have in the middle of winter, right? And as you said, I went through the instruction manual, and that thing is like, 50 pages, 50, 70 pages, and I’m like, Oh, boy. So we looked it up on, we looked it up on YouTube, right? So there’s a two minute video how to fix it. Knows something about, like, loosening a screw and the in the mechanism that sits, sits on the roof the garage, and before you know it, it was fixed, right? So…
Jessica Deckinger 21:25
I mean, it’s amazing, it’s amazing and life changing.
Christian Klepp 22:57
Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, it was, yeah, that was something that you brought up in the onboarding and usage stage. So I thought, yeah, absolutely agree that that’s one of many benefits of video.
Jessica Deckinger 23:08
And ultimately, I think, like there is something also about the fact that you just said something very real, which is that we all have human experience, and even in B to B world, this is true now, which is recognizing that it’s not just that a user, be they B to C or B to B, is a human. At the end of the day, everything is B to H, right? So even if it’s business to committee, it’s business to human, right? There, there are a bunch of humans there, and nobody wants dehumanized unilateral one per one size fits all experience in any part of the journey anymore, because we’re all humans, and we recognize that. And so I think there’s also like, something about you as a customer of this company, like not wanting to call and get like, press one for blah de blah, press two for like, that is a dehumanizing experience. You have been taken and fed to a machine, and it feels dehumanizing. And I think that is a larger sign of you wanted to feel like a person, have someone tell you how to do it, figure it out, feel good, resolve your problem, right? And that’s all true in the way that customers in any setting, in any kind of type of customer, is expecting to be addressed and written word like you said, is valuable. It’s not not valuable. Websites still convert people, emails still convert buyers. You know, there’s lots of different tools in the arsenal. I just think that there is a power and a special value in video, in the part of engaging the human part of the experience, the emotional response you have to something when it feels like it’s for you, when it feels like it solves a pain point, even if it’s a pain point about a garage door, right? There’s a there’s something that feels really good about solving your pain, like it feels a relief.
Christian Klepp 24:50
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, as opposed to, like, what you just said, just calling up the customer support hotline and waiting in the queue for half an hour, or 45 minutes.
Jessica Deckinger 25:02
It’s horrible. Everyone knows. Everyone’s been there. Your wait time will be 22 minutes. You’re like, Oh my God, that’s 22 minutes. I can’t get back of my life. (laugh)
Christian Klepp 25:10
And then when you finally get to talk to an actual person, they don’t know how to solve the problem, and they refer you to somebody else. So you end up like, having an hour of your life wasted. Let me get back right?
Jessica Deckinger 25:19
You bring up a really good point also, which is that as a customer experience, as a Customer Success tool, when you are a company, you should prove that you know your customers better by a certain point of the journey.
Christian Klepp 25:30
Absolutely
Jessica Deckinger 25:31
And know their pain better by a certain point of the journey. So I’m sure that you are not the first person to experience this pain point. And there’s something great about being able to gather those data points, and then use video to solve those data points about pain in a way that’s scalable, which like if you call that… for that person may not have answered that question before, but if you have the content in your repository about that problem and can push it forward, that’s really powerful, too, right? Because then you can basically operationalize and streamline the efficiency of your customer service experience and your customer success experience. You know, because there’s shared, there’s shared problems and shared solutions out there.
Christian Klepp 26:12
Exactly, exactly you brought up such a good point earlier on the topic of technology. And I mean, this is a podcast in 2024 so I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t ask you this question. But AI and video, right? Do these two go together? And why?
Jessica Deckinger 26:32
I think sometimes yes, sometimes no, and I’ll give you a couple examples. So I think AI as an enabler of the creation process, meaning, like AI as an enabler of editing, suggesting new ideas, bringing creative thinking, kind of being like a co pilot person with you, doing the thing is great, updating and editing imagery that might take you hours to edit, you know, suggesting new creative executions that you could add into the process. Like, I think as a partner in crime, AI is amazing. That’s great. As a replacement for humans, I don’t think it’s so great. Like, I think it’s a support lift mechanism, not a replacement mechanism. But it’s funny. The other day, I watched a segment about Eric Yuan, who’s the CEO of zoom, saying that AI is going to replace us in meetings. Humans like you just have an avatar replacing your meetings. I know they’re like, making this so immediately I was like, Well, that sounds like great, not to have to go to meetings anymore. But also I’m like, do I want to replace the myself in meetings, I actually do find meetings sometimes they’re not valuable if I’m just sitting on a screen, but if I’m actually engaging with another human, I find that really valuable, and I think the other place. So when I think about AI avatars, like companies that have gone that direction, where you replace a person with a machine, to me, it feels a little bit not helpful and counter intuitive because of what we just talked about, right? Like, you call that phone number and you get press one for a bloody blah like, taking away the humanity, the personalization in video, to me, feels counter to what I’d want, because I don’t want a machine telling me something in a different medium that doesn’t help me, like I don’t need I don’t… just as much as I don’t want the machine telling you what to do when I pick up the phone. I don’t want them telling you that on the screen. And I think it’s not sophisticated enough yet to be able to not tell the difference like I think it’s hard to replace the people element, but to scale the people element is amazing. So to me, the scale part, the thinking about the response, the data analysis off of the video performance, the creation, co piloting, of the creation of the process like those are all tools we should be leveraging now and are really productive in getting us to do more, better, faster, more personalized. All the right things?
Christian Klepp 28:55
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think the description you used is really, really appropriate. You said co pilot. So it’s somebody like, you’re a wing man or wing woman. Make it a bit more balanced. And I totally agree with that. I think there’s a time and place for AI, but this notion of, like, completely replacing what we’re doing now with artificial intelligence or machine learning. Yeah. I mean, not even far-fetched. But like, to your point, do we really want that? I mean, like, I can share an experience with you that I’ve had here. Any you call any bank in Canada, right? And they will put you into this, into this loop where you know you have to press one for this and press two for that. But now they’ve introduced AI, and they will introduce themselves as, Hello, I am this bank’s AI. What are you looking for today? Oh, I want to check my account. I’m sorry I didn’t hear that. Please repeat. And it just creates, I think, even more frustration in a situation where the customer is already calling under, yes, exactly.
Jessica Deckinger 29:05
Like you’re under duress, and it’s aggravating you more,
Christian Klepp 30:02
And it’s aggravating you more. So by the time you actually talk to a human you’re just pissed off.
Jessica Deckinger 30:07
And I think that the thing is, I think we will get, I actually think it will get there to the point where it’s that sophisticated that you could if it’s large language model based things, but the big but is what you just said, I think, like some chat bots now, AI chat bots have gotten really pretty refined. If the large language learning model, language model is like sophisticated enough, and it’s closed loop and it’s interesting, but it’s not, I think a lot of that’s not there yet. And so a lot of hallucinations you get AI that does weird things, you know, you get AI that tells you something nothing to do with what you said, and you make the problem worse. So I think, look, I said this the other day that we were talking about this with someone else, and I was saying this, like, being leading edge is great. Being bleeding edge is a little dangerous, especially when you’re talking about, you know, you’re addressing customers pain, and there’s risk there that you’ll… like what we just talked about earlier. With retaining your customers, they have to feel valued. If you make them more upset when they’re under duress, you’re not going to solve that problem, right? You’re going to make a bigger problem. So to me, it’s really thinking about ways to co pilot and create more better, but with the end goal of being, scaling the humans to create better experience, scaling personalization to create better experience. That’s the way you use AI right now, I don’t know where it’s going to land. No one can predict.
Christian Klepp 31:31
Nobody knows,
Jessica Deckinger 31:32
But I think right now, that’s where it is, and I think we’re going to be there for a while, because it’s going to, you know, the AI is only as good as what we put in.
Christian Klepp 31:39
It’s constantly evolving. It’s constantly learning, right? So they’re always talking about, you have to train the AI, and it’s still learning. It’s still learning your behaviors, your patterns and…
Jessica Deckinger 31:49
Exactly. But I think what you experienced is very common, and actually people are getting irritated by it because they just don’t want to, like, stop with AI. It’s too much,
Christian Klepp 31:59
Absolutely, and some of them, and I’ve seen this, like, live and unplugged, they just resort to going to the branch in person, right?
Jessica Deckinger 32:05
Yeah,
Christian Klepp 32:06
Because they just can’t solve it online. I know that the banks try to, like, push you to like, oh, just, just go online. You can do this all online, and you can do it on your app, but if the app and the artificial intelligence just creates this extremely frustrating experience for the customer they’re gonna default to, well, the old way of doing things.
Jessica Deckinger 32:25
100%. This is where I do think, like proactive engagement across known challenges and training and the onboarding process. Like, again, having that really good onboarding process is pretty critical and and then I think having a really strong infrastructure to support that with humans. It’s that balance, right? So I 100% agree. I think that’s really an interesting dynamic. We’ll see how it changes over time.
Christian Klepp 32:47
Well, only time will tell. Only time will tell. Okay, Jessica, we get to the point in the conversation where we are talking about actionable tips, and you’ve given us plenty already, but if there’s somebody out there that’s listening to this, this conversation you and I are having and saying, You know what, we’ve got to, like, start leveraging video, right? So what are these three to five things that B to B marketers can do to leverage video for every part of the customer journey?
Jessica Deckinger 33:15
Yeah. I mean, I think there are many, but I’ll pick a few just so we don’t run out of time. One is, I think, compartmentalizing information to digestible chunks, like thinking about how you’re going to communicate in those small format chunks we talked about, which I think is critical today more than ever, makes you more relevant, helps you get more ROI on the information you’re delivering through video. I think, you know, that’s a critical piece of this success. A video is being that, being digest… thinking about the digestibility of it.
The second is thinking about mapping your communication barriers out, like actually thinking before you tackle stuff. First of all, will help with the stakeholder issue. Because if you’re sensing a massive communication pain point, they probably are too. And I think tackling the most painful things first is critical. Really being on top of those priorities of what’s most painful in what priority rank order.
I think understanding the video readiness of your teams pretty important, and also encouraging folks that anyone can really do it, and then having that kind of three pillar approach we talked about to getting any people who are not video ready on board with it, right like making sure that they get on board so that you’re… if you’re gonna get into the video game, you need people to be believers, even if it’s just suspension of disbelief right now, because what you don’t want to do is jump in and like, and everyone’s too scared and doesn’t necessarily want to do it, or they’re actually not engaged.
And then I think that’s the fourth thing is really probably one of the most important, which is thinking about where you can leverage what you already have, like, if you’re going to go out and start investing in software to produce video content at scale, you need to make sure that you are not wasting the things you have, and that the tool you buy doesn’t waste the things you have, like you shouldn’t have to create from scratch, everything new. If you are a marketer, if you’re a salesperson, you probably have built out, at least in your head, if not out in the world, some kind of content, some kind of imagery, some kind of branding, some kind of positioning, some kind of messaging around what your value proposition, what your differentiators are, and you need a tool that’s going to help you co pilot those things into content that can be scaled. And I think that’s important to know where you can leverage those things, what things you have, understanding what’s in your arsenal already. And then when you get a tool, you can then, like, plug and play those things.
Christian Klepp 35:42
Those are, those are some dynamite tips. Some dynamite tips. And, you know, going back to your point, um, folks don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I think it’s a part of it is also resourcefulness, like check your existing assets, your existing content, and see what can be leveraged there or even repurposed. There is some merit to repurposing content in different formats.
Jessica Deckinger 35:42
And I think the last thing I say, just like, you need to make sure, as you’re assessing a tool, if you’re thinking about bringing in a tool, that the AI is, is the right formula. We just talked about, right, that the AI is, if there’s AI, that it’s real, it’s a real thing that’s actually going to help you, and that it’s going to be co piloting. Because I do think there is that first topic we brought up, which is, what’s keeping people from video, if the copilot can actually help you get over the hurdle of feeling like it’s too hard, it takes too long, it’s too expensive, all those things, takes too much genius, as Steven Spielberg, right? Like, I think if it can help you tackle those things, then you know it’s a legitimate co pilot and a legitimate AI functionality. And I think those are going to be important things to consider. Those are my five. I could go on, but I’m not going to do that.
Jessica Deckinger 36:30
100%
Christian Klepp 36:32
But again, just for the benefit of the listeners, I’m just going to repeat what you said in terms of the actionable tips. So compartmentalization of information into digestible chunks, I think, was the first point. The second point was mapping your communications barriers out and tap into the most painful things first. Couldn’t agree with that more, because I’ve done it. Understanding the video readiness of your teams. Absolutely important. Leveraging what you already have in terms of existing assets and content, and finally, the assessment of technology per se, or determining whether AI is the right fit or the right formula for you to use.
Jessica Deckinger 37:32
100% that’s right. Yeah.
Christian Klepp 37:33
Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so we’re gonna get to the, I call this the soapbox question, so I’m gonna ask you to, like, get up there, right? And on this topic of leveraging video, right? What is a status quo that you passionately disagree with, and why.
Jessica Deckinger 37:54
A status quo? Oh, I have, I have one. I have one. This is very highly personal.
Christian Klepp 38:00
Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it.
Jessica Deckinger 38:01
It’s okay?
Christian Klepp 38:01
Yes.
Jessica Deckinger 38:02
So I started my career in marketing in B to C, business to consumer marketing. And I kind of referenced this earlier, but I’m going to go deep. I think it’s important. And I transitioned into B to B, business to business marketing mid-career. And I think there is a deeply held perspective by a lot of folks, that they are separate animals, like completely different animals. You cannot transfer those skills. You do not have shared insights between those two. That they’re basically different career paths, and that transitioning between both doesn’t hold a lot of value, and that the implications of the learnings from both wouldn’t apply across either field. I deeply, deeply disagree with this to my heart and soul, and it’s not just because of my own personal experience. I think there is a ton of insight from B to C, the transferable to B to B and the other way around. I think the differences that most people sense are foundationally in language barriers, right, different terminology used in B to C and B to B, but ultimately it’s all B to H really. It really is at the end of the day. And so look, I think B to B marketing tends to focus on because you’re selling to committees, because you’re selling to corporate personas, thinking about data driven, data enabled, data measured tactics, and oftentimes are a little more squeamish about very above the funnel, awareness building, brand generating things. I’m making assumptions here based on my experience. But and then on the B to C side, I think B to C, you know, feel much more that emotional purchase requires a lot of or emotionally driven, charged purchase of an individual, requires a lot more consumer psychology, developed stuff at the above the funnel, awareness building. And they love to do more data driven things, but feel a lot of times that they have to focus so hard on that, like brand awareness, brand loyalty stuff, visuals, all those things. I actually think that both of those things should merge like there is an emotional factor to a B to B decision. I don’t, I don’t care who says there is not. I completely disagree. I think when you are a human making a decision about something, your relationships with the company, your feeling that the your problems are heard, your understanding of what you’re going to buy and feeling like it’s aspirational to what it’s going to deliver versus what you’re going to pay are all just as important as they are in B to C. And I think in B to C world, the need to have data driving the marketing motions, you know, understanding customer feedback in meaningful ways. Integrating that into new learnings is critical too. And I’m not saying everybody blanket is in those two categories of separation, but I think it validates how much marketers are more alike than they think B to C and B to B land. And look, I think being really sharp in all those things makes kind of great B to C marketers who operate like B to B’s and great B to B’s who operate like B to C’s, and people who do both really well. And I think that’s a really like, great unifying factor. We could all bring ourselves together more. Should we all be thinking like strategic B to H marketers. That’s my that’s my soapbox.
Christian Klepp 41:36
Yeah, yeah, you weren’t kidding. That is a soapbox moment. No, no. But, I mean, like, a lot of the things that you said, I mean, they totally resonated with me, and I do agree with that, right? I do know that there is a camp out there, and you probably know some of these people as well that completely keep these two camps separate, right? That say, like, Absolutely not B to B’s a different beast. You should stop, people should stop saying we should be influenced by B to C. Throw that playbook away. I mean, yeah, yeah, I don’t agree with that. I mean, for me, it’s similar to AI. It really depends on the situation, on the vertical, at which stage the company is at. But to completely dismiss that these two have certain aspects of, you know, characteristics that overlap. To completely dismiss that. I don’t think that that’s right, right?
Jessica Deckinger 42:30
Yeah, yeah.
Christian Klepp 42:31
And there’s, and there’s living proof of that. And I know that some of these campaigns are dated, but living proof that you can be creative in B to B. I mean, there’s a couple of campaigns that ran many years ago. I’m just gonna say, um, there was one by GE, and it was a video series called Data Landia. If you’ve never heard, I remember, do you remember that one?
Jessica Deckinger 42:50
Yeah,
Christian Klepp 42:51
Wasn’t that incredible, and that…
Jessica Deckinger 42:54
I think there are lots of these that really do think, like the end human buying the stuff. So yeah, and it’s not a blanket like it has to be true for every single thing. I agree with you. It’s all specific to the case.
Christian Klepp 43:06
For sure, for sure. I mean, that one was on, on, on big data, right? Yeah. And then Cisco came up with a series a couple of years ago focusing on CISOs, on the topic of cyber security. And they came up with a comic book series, all right, about these superheroes that were, you know, trying to like, rid the world of like cyber threats, right, right? Okay, granted that Cisco and GE also have very generous budgets. All right, okay, and that,
Jessica Deckinger 43:34
But I think, I think the micro tactic of that is just thinking about personalization as a tool to the individual buyer. And I think a lot of ABM softwires are thinking about this now as well. Like, how can I think about my unique buyer and their particular pain point? And that is a very B to C, traditionally, B to C lands to live in. Like, let me think about you individual D to C buyer, but in B to B, we’re starting to do that now, like think to the account based personalized company approach. And so that’s where I mean, it’s not… I’ve made it very dramatic for the soapbox, but I think it is ultimately about refining down what you’re doing to personalize it enough that at the end of the day the buyer feels like you’re actually doing something for them.
Christian Klepp 44:23
Yeah. I mean, you made it dramatic, but rightly so, rightly so. I think it’s something that needs to be said. But, yeah. Okay, so I’ve got two more questions for you, Jessica, and then I’m gonna let you go. All right, so here comes the bonus question, and what career advice would you give your younger self, and I’m not saying that you’re that you’re not young you are, but like your younger self, when you started…
Jessica Deckinger 44:47
I’m self-aware, yes… my younger self, I think I would give myself the advice that I should not be afraid to approach risk with a measured lens. I think I was very risk averse as a young person. I was scared to try the new thing. I was scared to not do what I was told. I was scared. You know, I was like, I was I’m a rule follower, like a hard rule follower. And I think it took me a really long time, and a lot of people pushing me, and I’m grateful for those mentors and advocates who pushed me. But to get more risky, and I don’t mean it has, I don’t mean risky, like doing crazy… I don’t have a motorcycle, but I think like being sharp about when to try something that is a little scary, and could fall flat on my face. I think I didn’t learn until I hit startup land. Really like the fast fail concept. I wish I had had that fast fail concept in my arsenal way earlier, because fast failing, if you set it up like, we’re gonna fast fail at, like, really inexpensively, at these like five things, learn a ton and be so much better for it. And failure is where you learn the most. And so if you’re not going to take risks, you’re not going to fail, you’re not going to learn and grow and do better. And as a marketer, it’s critical, like you cannot die hard on your sort of righteousness of the thing you’re going to do right and spend a gazillion dollars at it. And it’s where this rapid iteration comes into play being able to make videos on fast right, like really fast, fast fail things. But I wish I had known earlier on in my career that I could safely fast fail and I wish the technology had been there to support it more. But, I also, if I’d known it, I probably would have done a couple more courageous or shattering things than I’ve done in my career. So any advice anyone I could give is that don’t be afraid to fail.
Christian Klepp 46:45
Fantastic, fantastic. You would have taken more leaps of faith, right? Yeah.
Jessica Deckinger 46:50
I mean, yeah, definitely.
Christian Klepp 46:51
I think that’s something that resonates with a lot of us. I mean, myself included. I was exactly like that too. I was a was a Boy Scout bound to the T right? Like people pleaser and, oh, we shouldn’t do that. I might rattle a few cages. And then I and then later on in my career, I realized, well, I think you need to rattle the cages to wake the animals up, right like…
Jessica Deckinger 47:11
And look at you now. I mean, amazing what you’re up to. So, you know, we all get there. We all get there eventually.
Christian Klepp 47:16
Absolutely, absolutely. Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. Quick introduce yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.
Jessica Deckinger 47:26
Sure. So I am a board member, a marketing executive. Best way to reach me is at my email. I know it’s like super old school or on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn. Jessica Deckinger, I’m also my email is Jessica@mintmarketing.group. You’re welcome to reach me there, if people want to reach out and have questions, but those two places are the best places to reach me, and I’m so grateful that you had me on today. Thank you so much, Christian. It was lovely speaking with you. I hope you enjoyed. I enjoyed a ton. So really, really grateful for the opportunity.
Christian Klepp 47:58
Oh, you’re very welcome. It was an absolute pleasure. So thanks again, Jessica, take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.
Jessica Deckinger 48:04
Thanks, Christian.
Christian Klepp 48:05
Bye, for now.
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