Report: The Future of Insurance
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Report: The Future of Insurance
DOWNLOAD NOWIn this episode of The Marketing Rapport, host Tim Finnigan welcomes Larry Kim, CEO of Customers.ai and a notable figure in the marketing world. They dive into the diverse applications of AI and data in marketing campaigns, discussing the depth and potential that many companies have yet to fully realize. Larry emphasizes the importance of customization beyond the surface level, hinting at the untapped opportunities in data utilization.
The conversation shifts to the future of marketing, where Larry provides a retrospective look at the past decade. He describes it as a golden era for marketers, with search engines and social media offering unprecedented targeting capabilities. However, he also acknowledges the challenges ahead, such as the increasing costs of paid media and the monopolistic tendencies of tech giants, which are reshaping the marketing landscape.
Finally, the discussion turns to the imminent changes in data privacy and the deprecation of third-party cookies. Larry stresses the need for marketers to adapt by developing new skills and strategies. He advocates for a strategic shift towards accumulating first-party data, preparing for a marketing future that may resemble the pre-digital era in its data scarcity. This episode is a wake-up call for marketers to innovate or risk obsolescence.
The Creation and Purpose of The Marketing Rapport
Timestamp: [00:01:22]
Tim Finnigan takes a moment to explain the genesis and mission of The Marketing Rapport podcast. He clarifies that the podcast is designed by marketers for marketers, aiming to bring a wide array of insights from thought leaders and experts across various industries. This part of the conversation sets the stage for the podcast’s goal of exploring diverse perspectives in the marketing universe.
“We created this as a marketing function at Verisk for the marketers of any other organization. So it’s created by marketers for marketers.”
The Diversity of AI-Enabled Campaigns
Timestamp: [00:23:21]
Larry Kim highlights the vast potential of AI-enabled campaigns in marketing. He points out that many companies are only scratching the surface when it comes to leveraging data and AI for marketing purposes. The conversation suggests that there is a deeper layer of customization and targeting available that businesses can tap into to significantly enhance their marketing strategies.
“The diversity of use cases for campaigns that are data and AI-enabled is much deeper than most companies realize.”
The Evolution of Marketing Channels
Timestamp: [00:04:07]
Larry reflects on the evolution of marketing channels over the past decade, describing it as an “amazing time” for marketers due to the advent of search marketing and social media advertising. He discusses how these channels have allowed for precise targeting and a significant return on investment, but also notes the increasing challenges due to market saturation and rising costs.
“It was just such a fantastic go-to-market for… promoting and selling products, like, search marketing, organic and paid search where you can just enter into people’s thoughts.”
The Shift in Data Accessibility
Timestamp: [00:09:28]
The conversation also covers data accessibility. Larry expresses concern over the diminishing access to user data for marketing purposes, a trend he describes as “a death of a thousand cuts.” He predicts that upcoming changes in data privacy will further restrict access to user data, which has historically been a cornerstone of digital marketing success.
“It does seem like that is increasingly in the rear view mirror, but that said, the only constant in marketing is change.”
[00:09:36] Larry Kim: “The only constant in marketing is change. I’m sure we’ll talk about different ways to adjust and adapt to those strategies, but this is an enormous change. We’ve kind of taken that for granted. All of this data is at arm’s length that you could just tap into it easily through your campaign execution. And now companies need to start thinking more strategically about stockpiling their own data on-premise, their own files or in their own applications.”
[00:17:50] Larry Kim: “Personalization, this is, uh, where you take, take all this data that you have, um, which, you know, even three, four, five years ago, you could have asked me and said, like, you know, why do I even need all this advanced data, uh, you know, on these, on these leads. And it’s becoming more apparent that, um, you know, one of the most important use cases is generative AI.”
[00:23:21] Larry Kim: “The diversity of use cases for campaigns that are data and AI enabled is much deeper than most companies realize. So I think I mentioned customizing an email, that kind of scratches the surface.”
Larry Kim: [00:00:00] the diversity of use cases for campaigns, you know, that are kind of data and AI enabled is much deeper than most companies realize. Um, So I think I mentioned like customizing an email that’s kind of scratches the surface. Um, um, you know, it’s, uh, it’s too.
[00:01:00]
Tim Finnigan: Welcome everyone to the next episode of the Marketing Rapport. For those of you coming back, thank you for listening again. We’ve got a great guest coming up, but for those that are new to the Marketing Rapport, just to give you a foundation of what the Marketing Rapport is all about. Uh, we created this, um, as a marketing function at Verisk.
for the marketers of any other organization. So it’s created by marketers for marketers. Uh, and what we do is we bring on thought leaders, subject matter experts, not only in, um, marketing, but. In leadership and other industries, because we want to get a wide range of, Hey, what’s happening out in the marketing universe.
Um, my name is Tim Finnegan and I run product marketing for Verisk Analytics. And with me today, I’ve got Larry Kim, who’s the CEO of customers. ai. He was [00:02:00] previously the founder and CTO at WordStream. Um. He’s got a lot going on with, he’s a contributor writer. He’s been on Inc Magazine, HubSpot, CNBC, Search Engine Land, and speaking of Search Engine Land, Larry, you were voted Marketer of the Year by Search Engine Land not too long ago.
Um, and just to round out who you are, you’re also a guest lecturer, uh, at the Harvard MBA program. So welcome to the Marketing Report, Larry.
Larry Kim: Uh, thank you, Tim. It’s great to be here.
Tim Finnigan: Great. So why don’t we start off just telling, telling the audience a little bit about you and what, uh, you’re currently doing with Customers.ai
Larry Kim: sure. I’m the founder and CEO of customers. ai. We are a, uh, Integrated, uh, uh, uh, sales outreach, uh, tools and data platform for mid market B2C companies like e commerce, uh, helping them find their customers in a very cost effective and scale scalable way. Um, and then mostly I [00:03:00] would say that, uh, my efforts are related to products, you know, engineering and marketing for, for, for the company.
Tim Finnigan: So let’s, let’s, let’s get right into it. Larry, when you talk about the, you know, sort of marketing in itself, um, you had some interesting takes on the future of marketing and sort of where it’s it’s evolving too, because we’vethese things coming up. We’ve heard about them in the past, like cookie list future and, and what’s happening with Apple and Chrome and, um, How do you see that whole, uh, world of marketing evolving at next, you know, the next short term and long term?
Larry Kim: Sure. Um, in order to understand where we’re going, it’s important to understand where we’ve come from. And I would categorize the last, uh, you know, decade or even more than a decade as being a very fruitful and very, you know, amazing time for, uh, you know. Unlocking [00:04:00] marketing use cases through, you know, search engines and social media and their related ad products.
Uh, that, you know, it was just such a fantastic go to market for. What an amazing time to be, uh, you know, promoting and selling products, right? Like search marketing, organic and paid search where you can just enter into people’s thoughts and disappear right at the right moment and social, you know, being able to, uh, you know, literally target any specific demographic interest in behavior.
You know, uh, at a scale, uh, that, uh, was just never really possible before. Um, if, if you’re old enough to remember, like we used to like, you know, buy a banner ad insertion or based on the, the, uh, you know, projected demographics of a magazine or website that, you know, it was, it’s pretty ridiculous actually.
Um, so that’s where, that’s where we come from. Um, you know, unfortunately, uh, I, I don’t think. Uh, like [00:05:00] that era of like incredible, um, you know, new marketing use cases. It does seem to be more and more in the rear view mirror, if you ask me, Tim, uh, that, you know, for various reasons, um, you know, the best, uh, that I’ve ever got, I would have pegged it at like, you know, a few years ago, uh, with, you know, a couple of couple of core issues on one hand there’s.
Uh, you know, competitiveness, you know, any great channel kind of soaks up all the attention and it just becomes more, more difficult to execute around, uh, in paid media that, um, you know, that manifests itself in terms of ridiculously high, you know, cost per clicks, uh, you know, for Facebook ads, Google ads, like they used to be 5 cents, you know, 50 cents CPMs kind of thing.
And now it’s like 20, 50 clicks and, you know, eight, 500, 000. CPMs. So there’s no, there’s no deals to be had there anymore. Um, if that was the only problem, you know, I, I might be less [00:06:00] pessimistic. Uh, but you know, the other big, uh, kind of global macro issue that’s happening in, in the marketing sphere is, um, these platforms like Facebook, Google, Apple, they’re just getting.
Really enormous and are starting to really more aggressively flex their, their muscles to protect their, you know, trillion dollar turfs, if that makes sense. So like, um, you know, take, know, Facebook or sorry, Google, for example. They’re an advertising company, um, they also are a browsing browser company that owns, you know, a significant portion of the, of the browser market share on, on, uh, Android and on desktop through their Chrome product.
Um, all of their competing ad products out there, like, uh, like Facebook or TikTok or, you know, uh, Trade Desk, like they’re all benefiting from. You know, tracking using third party cookies, like any, anyone can just track, you [00:07:00] know, anybody. Uh, and, and that’s, you know, for, for the purposes of, uh. You know, performance marketing, basically to, to still turn a profit, even though these clips are like 50 and Google is realizing like, well, why, why, why are we giving these other ad platforms like a free ride?
Like, you know, why are we letting them, you know, attribute and, and attract users when, you know, any dollar spent on, on TikTok ads is a dollar less spent on, on, on Google ads. And so, you know, after. You know, a couple of years of kind of declaring that this was going to be the case, they’ve finally done it.
They’ve declared, you know, third party cookies. They’re going away next year, uh, and I think it’s going to go out very quickly. Like they’re saying it’s over the course of the year, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised if, if, if that, you know, if after like a week or two, you know, they start really ramping up that deprecation.
Um, and, and, and we’re seeing the same thing on other platforms like Apple, uh, you know, with their [00:08:00] 17, like, you know, they’re making it really difficult for advertisers to enjoy the benefits that we’ve historically benefited from, which is, you know, pretty much unfettered access to, uh, You know, you know, enormous amounts of data, uh, and, and, um, you know, for various reasons, um, uh, I think it’s, uh, has a lot to do with these, the, the monopoly, um, you know, the FTC hearings with the Google monopoly hearings going on in Washington right now, you know. Apple’s finally decided to stop executing, uh, ad scripts in, in, in, um, you know, in safari, like the, the Facebook ad pixel, the Google ad pixel, these are all JavaScripts that you put on your website. And, um, you know, these are seen by these, these, this browser, but is just, it’s completely ignored along with 25 other top 25 other, you know, ad pixels.
Uh, so, so like. You know, it does seem like there was this, is kind of a long answer to your question. Uh, but it, but it, it just seems like, uh, there, there’s, uh, you know, [00:09:00] the era of like being able to, you know, Medium sized businesses seamlessly and easily. Like just by signing up for a Facebook ad account or a Google account to, to be able to tap into the, the, uh, vast, you know, amounts of data that they have and to, you know, turn a profit on, on, on a few dollars investment.
Um, and to be able to, you know, remarket and to, you know, track the effectiveness of those types of campaigns. It does seem like that is increasingly. In the rear view mirror, you know, but that said the only constant in marketing is change. Uh, and you know, I’m sure we’ll talk about different ways to, you know, adjust and adapt to, to those strategies, but this is, this is an enormous change.
Tim, like this is, uh, we’ve kind of taken for granted that. You know, all of this data is at arm’s length that you could just tap into it easily through, through your campaign execution. Uh, and now I [00:10:00] think, uh, companies need to start thinking more strategically about, you know, stockpiling their, their own data, you know, on premise, like, like in their own files or, or in their own applications, that kind of thing.
Uh,
Tim Finnigan: So Larry, before I do want to jump into first-party data and their own data, but I, I, I loved your answer because this whole topic of cookies and, and, you know, script is, it, It’s been like on people’s minds for a couple of years, right? Like if you go back and read any of the 2021 trends or 2022 trends or 2022, like one of the things is, hey, cookies are coming and you know, they’re finally going to be here.
And I don’t know how you feel about this, but I feel like marketers. In general, have been lazy when it comes to having the ability to build audiences and remarket and now that being taken away, they’ve got to have some new skills going forward. So I’d like you to [00:11:00] touch base, like, uh, so what’s the, what’s the value of this first-party data and the importance of it.
Larry Kim: So again, this is something that we’ve taken for granted because it’s, it’s been, you know, the platforms have historically made this very easy to operationalize, um, you know, having this data, it allows you to. Really understand your target market, you know, in terms of like the, the interest demographics and behaviors of the people who are buying your stuff, like, you know, uh, you know, to, to be, to be able to drill, drill into that information.
Like this, this information used to be provided to you by putting up like a Google analytics or Facebook pixel on your website. And then, you know, there was like this, you know, Google Analytics used to have like a user explorer, and they took that away because I think they would prefer us to be in the dark.
Uh, you know, uh, Facebook also used to have, um, you [00:12:00] know, some very sophisticated abilities to just see all of this information, which was. Removed like after the Trump election and all this Cambridge Analytica stuff. Uh, I felt like, Oh, wait a minute. We, we, we’ve gotten so big that we actually have more to lose by exposing, you know, this, this kind of information than, than the gain from it.
Uh, so, so like, um, we used to, we used to be able to have all this insights on who the target market was, uh, as well as, um, you know, what they were doing. And, and, um. And who, who, who is converting, uh, and, and, and, and this, you know, it’s been a death of a thousand cuts, like the resolution into that truth, uh, is, is kind of been significantly diminished year after year after year, and I do think that some of these changes coming up in the next, uh, three to six months, you know, will, will really kind of kill off what’s left.
And if, if you don’t have that, you’re marketing like it was pre, you know, pre 15 years [00:13:00] ago. Like where, when, when we didn’t have any of these innovations, which were, were the, the types of innovations that that led led to the, you know, the incredible improvements in, in targeting. In terms of, you know, return on investment in terms of, um, you know, uh, campaign optimization, like the, just our ability to, to turn campaigns into revenues is, is, uh, you know, kind of rose this, uh, You know, a trend of platforms exposing more and more data, uh, and, and, and is, is most certainly going to, is moving in the opposite direction as they’ve kind of the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction where they’re moving to restricted.
And so. First-party data, uh, again, I’m the slowest to answer your questions. I’m sorry. Like it’s, it’s, it’s the data that’s owned and operated, like, you know, behind you, the company, the, the store, the store, the, you know, your business, um, uh, that [00:14:00] understanding, uh, which used to be a little bit more commoditized because it was more readily accessible through third party Third party data.
Um, you know, I think that, uh, uh, you know, a strategic impetus for, you know, businesses in 2023 has to do with, um, you know, stockpiling, collecting, you know, and, you know, and. Uh, you know, aggregating and enriching, you know, your own, uh, sources of first-party data, you know, for the, for the purposes of resurrecting the types of campaigns that we used to, you know, love and enjoy, uh, that were so effective.
Tim Finnigan: Right. And, and, you know, that’s what. You know, Verisk does as far as enriching first-party data so you can better market and personalize touch on what you think are, you know, the, those, those skills that marketers need to revisit where they can’t rely on Google AdWords or Google Analytics or, you [00:15:00] know, scripts or cookies.
What, what are some things that a regular marketer for B2B or B2C can start doing or needs to look back and say, Oh. That’s interesting. That was done a couple of years ago. We should really try that again. What do you see going
Larry Kim: Sure. So I think there’s like a balancing of roles, um, that, um, there’s, uh, um, let’s see here. So maybe in the past we were more focused on, um. You know, all this campaign execution, um, and, um, you know, maybe that needs to be rebalanced, uh, that, you know, thanks to all these new AI innovations, you know, a lot of those campaign executors are going to be put out of business, like, just because, you know, that, that stuff is actually ridiculously easy to do with an LLM, um, you know, in 2023, um, but then there’s this other role, um, Uh, it kind of sits on the intersection of, I don’t know, people who run your email campaigns, people who run your kind of operation-wise, [00:16:00] your CRMs, or your, your, your customer, your CDPs, like your, your customer, uh, data platforms. You know, they’ve had to become a little bit more, uh, you know, significantly more smart about how they execute their job. It’s not just about babysitting some CRM, uh, they need to be thinking about how to, uh, You know, dramatically increase the resolution of those data data stores in terms of like, you know, more contacts and more, more leads, um, and also a higher resolution of understanding in terms of the kind of the, and the essence of those, those leads, whether it be like for graphic data, if you’re a B2B, so like, you know, where do they work, you know, enriching, um, Everything you know about those people in terms of their, their work identity, or if you’re a B2C company, it would be, you know, enriching all that information from a B2C perspective in terms of like, you know, consumer data, uh, you know, household [00:17:00] income or address or cell phone numbers and stuff like this, um, interest behaviors, uh, and yeah.
You know, you might ask like to what end? Um, well, uh, it’s, I think there’s a couple of use cases. Uh, number one would be, uh, to restore lost analytics function functionality. So, so to be able to, to, to, you know, understand, you know, who’s, who’s buying yourself and where you should be focusing your efforts in the first place.
Um, uh, another. Area would be, um, personalization. So, so this is, uh, where you take, take all this data that you have, um, which, you know, even three, four, five years ago, you could have asked me and said, like, you know, why do I even need all this advanced data, uh, you know, on these, on these leads. And it’s becoming more apparent that, um, you know, one of the most important use cases is generative AI.
Uh, so, so the ability to, uh, let me see if I can describe this. Uh, it used to be that you would have your big list and you would segment it into two, into two, um, two buckets, [00:18:00] like, you know, people who have cats and people who have dogs and have run different campaigns. Um, you know, the challenge there was, you know, every time you create another segmentation, that increased the amount of work for those campaign executors.
Um, and the other challenge was that you. You never really knew that much about those people because you wouldn’t have a checkout form that asked like 50 questions. You know, they say like, keep it, keep it as little as possible. Um, but this genre of AI is just so transformative. That it, it just unlocks like, you know, ridiculous personalization at scale.
Like you can auto-regenerate, you know, instead of sending out 50, 000 of version a and 50, 000 copies of version B to your prospects, like every single interaction that you send out, like emails, uh, could, could look up, you know, data points on the individual, the recipient, uh, and, and, you know, be lightly customized.
To reflect back their identity. So, so like this merging, uh, you know, AI [00:19:00] generative use case is, is, uh, it’s, it’s kind of like, uh, unlocking use cases and ROI and, and experiences that, that, you know, this wasn’t possible. Previously, you know, uh, so it’s also about restoring performance advertising capabilities.
So, um, you know, as you build up this moat of first-party data, um, you know, it’s the ad platforms do have server API’s, uh, that don’t rely on cookies or, or. Scripts. So what you can do is you can, you know, dial through a server call directly to those ad platforms and send your first-party data directly to them, thereby kind of, you know, not having to deal with all these kind of, uh, you know, perils of trying to send data through cookies and scripts, which is just not not a reliable, you know, [00:20:00] route, uh, you know, anymore.
So, I, I just think to your, to your question, like, who does it? It’s, it’s like this, whoever, whoever was dealing with the ads or the emails or, or the CDP or the, the CRM, that role has expanded in scope and in skills as the kind of the resolution of data. And the, and the transmission reliability of data has diminished, uh, from, from the, from the platforms and browsers, uh, you know, over the last, you know, three, four, five years.
And, and I think, you know, it’s, I, I don’t think everyone’s figured it out. I think it’s, um, you know, only the top. You know, three or four, 5% of of companies have, have, have figured it figured this out right now. Um, but, uh, that this is, this is kind of like the emerging field of, of, of the winners, of, of the, of the, uh, the next, you know, like think about the brands, the big brands of 2023.
These were the ones who were all over a search [00:21:00] engine and Facebook ads and, and social like, you know, a decade ago. Uh, and, and you know. What’s, what are the innovations that are going to power, you know, the next, you know, portfolio of, of, uh, you know, consumer brands or, or B2C companies, like it’s going to be the ones that are able to kind of enable these data capture and, and, and leveraging that data in their campaigns, those types of motions.
Tim Finnigan: Yeah. And I, I like how you, you like, you’re sort of your three things with the restore personalization, like restoring analytics and, and who’s going to be able to enable all that. And you were mentioning some top businesses and, um, I just want to react to what you said about AI. And, and I, In generative AI, I do think that that’s where businesses are going to, to your point, be able to build campaigns and build segmentation.
But one of the things I want to make sure that people understand is that there is that first piece that you mentioned, like that first-party identity [00:22:00] resolution. And a buddy of mine that I work with goes, he would always present like, guess what? Identity resolution is hard. It’s not that easy to do. It’s like, you just can’t just say, Hey, let’s do it.
So that’s why you need companies like where I work or you have your own data scientists to really, um, harness that first-party data so you can get to what you were talking about personalization. Right? Cause isn’t it? Isn’t. What we’re trying to do is that one to one marketing or identifying the who, the what, and the when.
And it’s not just by putting Larry’s name on an email, it’s really getting into their likes, dislikes, how they want to be reached, what type of channel. And that’s what my, sort of my point when I asked you is that the evolution of marketing needs is going to go from laziness to relying on certain things to really working hard and trying to understand Who our customers are and how we can better market to them.
So Larry, thank [00:23:00] you for being here. Do a couple other points you want to sort of add to? We had talked about maybe what should, uh, marketers be paying attention to? Maybe not right now, but in the future, anything, um, you want to add with generative AI or, um, uh, first-party or cookies, any, any last closing comments?
Larry Kim: Yeah, it’s just, um, the, the diversity of use cases for campaigns, you know, that are kind of data and AI enabled is much deeper than most companies realize. Um, So I think I mentioned like customizing an email that’s kind of scratches the surface. Um, it’s just, if you have the reason why you need this, this first-party data, like all this enriched data that your company provides, um, you know, it’s, uh, it’s too.
It’s the fuel for these generative AI use cases. And so just to enumerate a few examples to get your, you know, [00:24:00] your listeners minds thinking it’s like, it’s not limited to emails. Like we can generate, you know, voicemails, like so speak. So text, you can generate texts and then AI. Text to speech, you know, conversion tools and then drop those as, as voicemails.
And it’s like, holy moly, this is like a really human sounding super customized voicemail or that there’s like use cases around like video where you, you know, you generate the text that’s customized using the data, you know, to, you know, power, like a talking head where it’s like you or me talking to the customer, but it’s like. Using the words that are generated through this data, uh, and, and, and, um, and these AI generative applications, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, we’re just really scratching the surface, uh, in terms of, um, you know, sure, sending an email, that’s the least you can, you can do, uh, and, and, um, you [00:25:00] know, there’s, there’s so much more, um, so I think, yeah.
You know, if I think about successful companies, you know, they have the marketing and then they have their marketing channels, like, so, so there’s like your core brand and your, your messaging and then the way that you then amplify those. Brand messages through a different channel, be it social or email or search or ads.
Um, you know, nothing’s changing with the, the core, you know, you, you, you know, your unique selling proposition or, you know, why should people should, should care about you. But like the way that you operationalize, uh, the go to market, like, uh, this, this requires like a much more deep understanding of. Of, of, data, uh, and, and, and, um, and all of the diversity of use cases that you could deploy this, uh, to, to, to the benefit of, of your, uh, to your, your customers and your business.
And, you know, my company customers AI, I mean, we, we do support [00:26:00] some of these use cases, like, um, you know, you have, uh, like, you know, using the, uh, you know. data enrichment, like using, um, you know, we’re like, we’re, uh, we’re like a partner, uh, you know, using, uh, data to identify. Visitor information and to follow up with them with customized emails at scale.
Like that’s, this is amazing. So like, we’ve lost, we’ve lost, you know, some power on some of the, you know, greatest hits of the last decade, but. know, but there’s like this new emerging thing, you know, for people who are scrappy and able to, you know, understand the, the, um, you know, the, the, the, the power here, uh, to, to, to use that to, to propel their business forwards for the next decade.
So, but I guess that’s how it always is to,
Tim Finnigan: And I love it. We’re getting rid of some of the oldies, but goodies, but we’re going into a whole new arena of getting more hits and, and trying to capture that. The truth of marketing and how we can get them into the, who we can [00:27:00] identify, we can identify the, who we can identify what they like, and we can hopefully identify where they want to be contacted and when they want to be contacted.
But Larry, I think we are smarter for listening to So at least I know I, I learned a ton, um, for anybody that wants to reach out to you or talk about customers, AI, how, how do they get ahold of you?
Larry Kim: uh, just, uh, my, uh, Twitter is Larry Kim or, or hit me up on a, on LinkedIn. Uh. And, uh, our website is WW it’s HTTPS customers. ai.
Tim Finnigan: All right, Larry, thank you so much for being a guest on the Marketing Rapport and we’ll see you soon.
Larry Kim: Awesome. Thanks.
[00:28:00]
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