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Amanda was the former head of brand for The Knot – the global leader in weddings. Previously, Goetz served as a startup founder building availability software for the wedding industry after spending years analyzing companies for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program. She also worked for celebrity wedding planner David Tutera as Head of Marketing developing the go-to market strategy for his brands, licensing deals and client partners. She has built an audience of over 150,000 in the startup and business community, learning to live a life of ambition and success without subscribing to today’s hustle culture. She launched a newsletter called 🧩 Life’s a Game with Amanda Goetz to help high performers learn actionable tips for living a life of intention. ABOUT MIGHTY NETWORKS Mighty Networks is the ONLY community platform that introduces your members to each other—for extraordinary engagement, longer retention, and word-of-mouth growth. You can run memberships, courses, challenges, and events on a Mighty Network—all under your own brand on mobile and web.…
Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
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Вміст надано Tim Peter. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією Tim Peter або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.
A weekly podcast exploring how e-commerce and digital trends shape your business and marketing strategy
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Вміст надано Tim Peter. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією Tim Peter або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.
A weekly podcast exploring how e-commerce and digital trends shape your business and marketing strategy
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Your business likely depends on Google, whether you like it or not. The whole reason I’m so focused on the role of gatekeepers — and how you can bypass them for marketing and customer acquisition — is because of their dominance in the marketplace. And no company is more dominant than Google. Most businesses get at least a plurality of their traffic and usually a significant chunk of their revenues downstream of Google. That could include traditional web search. It could include local search. It could include metasearch, product search, YouTube recommendations, and a host of other channels within Google’s ecosystem, all adding up to traffic and revenue for you. That’s why anything that hurts Google can hurt your business. And, right now, Google faces more challenges than they have in years. Those include competition from AI startups like ChatGPT and Perplexity, antitrust and other civil litigation in the US and Europe, pressure from users more interested in social, and, of course, its traditional competitors for mindshare like Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. It’s easy to assume then that Google is doomed in 2025. I’m not so sure, though. What does worry me is whether their responses to these pressures works in your business’s best interests. In other words, even if they manage to continue their dominance in the market, you still could find yourself with lower traffic, reduced revenues, higher costs, or all of the above. That’s… no bueno. So, whether or not Google is doomed, what should you do as you move into 2025? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Revisiting Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Is the new ChatGPT Search a significant threat to Google? The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) Trump says Google has ‘a lot of power’ and he would do ‘something’ about it — but stops short of favoring a break-up Trump’s admin puts new light on Google’s potential breakup JD Vance Live at RemedyFest – YouTube Digital Markets Act – Wikipedia DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly Google Earnings Release PDF link OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows — The Information OpenAI and others seek new path to smarter AI as current methods hit limitations | Reuters OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI – Bloomberg Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) Google Loses its Antitrust Case: Why That Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 429) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 28m 53s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Revisiting Is Google Doomed in 2025? Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 440 of The Big Show. And thank you so much for tuning in. I think we have a really, really cool show for you. I want to start by saying, A, this is a follow up to last week’s episode that looked at the future of computing and Big Tech’s earnings for Q3 of 2024. And what I didn’t do last week was spend much time talking about Google. With everything that’s going on with the world of artificial intelligence and the competition that Google is seeing from AI based startups and the like, the question that people keep asking me is, will next year be the end of Google? And I want to get the big question out of the way right up front. There is no way that Google is dead by the end of 2025 . And I don’t think it’s terribly likely that they are anything other than the dominant player by the end of next year. I’m not going to predict that SEO is dead. I will not predict that Google is dead. No way. At the same time, I’m fairly certain that Google will be a vastly different company at the end of 2025 than they are today. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a decent amount of money that Google is not as dominant in your world by the end of next year as they are today. Let’s put this in terms that you can easily see. Go to your website’s Google Analytics traffic acquisition report and change the duration that you’re looking at for the last 90 days or the last 12 months. You pick. It doesn’t matter to me. First, take a look at the total sessions you’ve received during the period you’re reviewing. Then, instead of just looking at the default view, which groups traffic by Session Primary Channel Group or something similar. Click the dropdown that shows Session Primary Channel Group, and change that to Session source/medium. Now, in the little search box after you do that, in the report, type "Google" and hit enter. This will show you how many sessions you’ve received during the selected period and, importantly, the percentage of traffic that Google, and especially Google/Organic, represents to your business. I want you to make a note of three numbers. First, write down the number of sessions from Google/Organic. You can also note the total traffic from Google and its share of your total traffic. If you’re like most businesses, I’d expect Google’s overall share to be somewhere between 25 and 65% of your traffic, and Google Organic’s share probably to be no less than, say, 10 or 12%, and could be as high as 60%, depending on how much advertising you do or how much you rely on organic search. I doubt it’s at the top end, though there are certainly edge cases where that could be true. The actual volume of traffic you get varies too widely by business and industry for me to hazard a guess at what the actual number will be. So right now I’m just talking in percentages. For my hospitality industry friends, keep in mind that traffic for Metasearch shows up under a different source/medium. It could be Sabre or Amadeus or Mirai or Siteminder or DerbySoft, ROIback, folks like that. We’re not going to worry about that traffic today. Here’s the bet I’d be willing to make 12 months from now. The share of traffic that comes from Google/Organic will be down no less than 5 percent from where it is today, if not more. Your Google traffic overall and your Google/Organic traffic level might increase, but the share of organic traffic, that is, free traffic that you get from Google today, will almost certainly decline by the end of 2025. And I have four big reasons for thinking that Google will be a different company and that as a consequence, your organic traffic will decline. The biggest is that Google needs to keep monetizing their search engine results pages. If your overall Google traffic goes up in the next year, It’s probably because you’ve traded some type of paid search, whether traditional CPC ads, metasearch, or something similar, For what is today free, organic search. The second reason is because Google continues to increase the number of zero click search response pages. Those pages provide answers to customers and don’t drive clicks through to the sources of those answers. I’m really confident that will drive down the amount of organic traffic you get over the course of the next year. The third reason that Google will be a vastly different company is what I started the show with. Google faces competitive challenges from alternative search engines and search experiences. One set of alternatives includes AI based options like ChatGPT’s new search feature and Anthropic’s Claude. Another is dedicated search engines like Perplexity and Bing. You have things like Apple Intelligence and iOS. And yet another alternative comes from consumers conducting more searches on social sites like TikTok or LinkedIn where we’re seeing a definite uptick, no pun intended — good thing because that’s a terrible pun — but we’re definitely seeing an uptick in that behavior. And the fourth reason that Google is definitely going to change is that Google is facing some serious antitrust threats that might prevent them from responding as quickly as they traditionally have. Don’t misunderstand, I would be very surprised if their various antitrust cases wrap up by the end of 2025. I also don’t think that those cases will reach a conclusion that will force Google to change their business model or anything that we’ll talk about in a moment. What I do think is true is that those cases will represent a distraction that will hurt Google’s ability to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace. It is awfully tough to run forwards when you’re looking over your shoulder with worry. Now, before I address the first three reasons in more detail, I do want to spend a moment on Google’s antitrust situation. Remember, I’m not a lawyer. I could be stupendously wrong about what I’m about to say here. My sense, though, is that the antitrust thing is a big honking deal. It is, you know, huge. There are reports that the DOJ apparently wants to strip Chrome away from Google as part of its proposed remedies to the case. That’s a rumor at this point. We don’t know if that’s true, but that’s the kind of thing people are talking about. They’re talking about major substantive remedies, major substantive structural remedies to the way Google operates as a business. And that’s just the cases that Google faces in the U. S. Obviously, the UK’s Competition Markets Authority, EU regulations like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and lawsuits across an array of jurisdictions also affects the reality of how Google does business. Sticking with just the U.S. for now, in any normal election year, you would expect that in an incoming Republican administration. would favor a hands off approach toward big business and that Google might be able to, you know, negotiate a settlement that’s favorable and quickly. At the same time, this obviously is not a normal incoming Republican administration. Instead, they’re a highly populist one, and there’s plenty of evidence they’re no more fond of big tech than a typical Democratic administration might be. The consensus I’ve read from people who seem to know what they’re talking about is that the Trump administration isn’t going to simply walk away from this. I’m going to read you a slightly lengthy quote for a moment here. This is a quote the speaker said, "I think my argument is actually even if you believe that there are network effects that make Google more powerful or make Gemini a more powerful tool within Google, There are actually some real, real issues here with just the integration. So does Google need to have YouTube? Does Google need to have all those other platforms that are built on top of or built underneath the Google umbrella?" The speaker continued by saying, "I think there’s a really good argument that if we want to be pro innovation, we want to ensure that new insurgents can change these things up. That you want to promote as much competition as possible, and you actually want to separate all of those market verticals as much as possible. That’s where I think antitrust is probably the most useful way to think about a solution to what we face." Would it shock you if I told you that that quote is from incoming Vice President JD Vance? That’s not the kind of rhetoric you typically hear. Would it further surprise you that Vance also said, "One final observation I’ll make just about this intersection between competition and innovation. If there’s a person within the Biden administration, obviously the FTC is an independent agency, but Lina Khan is the person that I would point to as the best person, in my view, within the Biden administration." Now, Lina Khan is the person in charge of the FTC, and the FTC is the folks who’ve been going after Google in many cases. So, yeah, that’s not what you might typically expect. Now, maybe the Trump administration will be more, well, let’s call it transactional, and Google can, for lack of a better term, "buy them off" by paying fines or God help us, making changes favorable to Trump’s policies or something. Trump’s rhetoric himself on the topic is decidedly mixed, so who knows, really? I’m going to link to a lot of this in the show notes. I do want to be fair, I’m not remotely going to make any bold predictions here, other to say that it seems unlikely that Google’s antitrust situation will simply go away without the company making some significant concessions or changes to how it does business. My confidence level on exactly what form those concessions and changes might take, I don’t And when they might occur, is pretty low. So, you know, take all of that with a grain of salt, but it does seem unlikely that those cases simply just, you know, vanish. Turning back to my actual topic of expertise, which is the digital marketplace itself, there was a recent discussion at HospitalityNet and on LinkedIn about whether startups like ChatGPT and Perplexity pose a threat to Google. First, there was no consensus among the panel of experts convened by HospitalityNet about whether or not others will beat Google. Personally, I lean towards Google continuing its dominance, at least in the intermediate term. If we return to last week’s look at big tech’s earnings, Google grew its revenues 15 percent year on year to $88.3 billion, and its profitability almost 34 percent to $26.3 billion. It was a record quarter for Google, both in revenues and in profits. The company is sitting on $97 billion in cash. They own one of the most powerful computing infrastructures in human history. They have one of the deepest pools of AI talent in the world. There’s also some evidence, including articles in Reuters and The Information and on Bloomberg that improvement in new AI models is slowing down. In other words, it’s getting harder for AI companies to show improvement versus existing models like GPT 4.0 and Gemini. If that slowdown holds true, success in the marketplace is not going to go to those with the most impressive model, because after all, the frontier models today are pretty good. You’re going to need to see dramatic improvement to separate yourself there. Instead, success will belong to those who do the best job of providing a useful product. To their customers, and Google definitely has the edge there. Remember the revenue numbers I just said like 10 seconds ago? Google has an amazing existing revenue model that simply prints money. No disrespect to ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude. But none of them today has a plan that makes anywhere near enough money as fast as they’re spending it. That’s not a formula for long term success. So, you know, I’m not, I’m not bullish on Google maintaining its dominance necessarily because I think they’re the most innovative or because they’ve done the coolest things. I think they’re the ones that have the deepest pockets and the deepest pool of talent to keep turning to, as well as a model that already pays for itself. That’s just going to be tough for folks to dislodge without a truly disruptive product. Obviously, if a new model comes out that, you know, blows up what we’ve seen to date, then all bets are off. But that doesn’t appear to be the direction we’re headed, at least at the moment. Barring any wildcards, I’m still going to put my chips on Google in this case. Now, at the same time, Google must keep finding ways to monetize their search engine results pages. They’re not going to drive double digit growth year on year without it. And that’s not great for your business, because they’re continually converting formerly free traffic into something you pay for. That’s their right. But that doesn’t mean it’s good for you or your business in the long term. Google keeps increasing the number of zero click search response pages, too. With its AI Overviews product, they’re giving customers answers without driving clicks to the sources of those answers. Again, that’s their right, but again, it’s not great for you or your business. Now, maybe customers will find that they prefer ChatGPT’s answers or Perplexity’s answers or Claude’s answers. My question is, is that any better for you? I don’t think so. If they’re not linking to you, if they’re not driving traffic to you and driving clicks to you, that’s a problem for you. And because of that, I want to go back to the bet I opened this episode with. I said I can pretty much guarantee you that your organic search numbers will decline. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead, by the way, it just means it’s going to be harder to drive traffic from those clicks where you used to get them. And all of those reasons I just gave are the reasons I’m fairly comfortable making the bet that your organic traffic will decline. What I neglected to say, of course, was that you have more than a little control over what happens there. You don’t have to take that as a given. You don’t have to let anything bad happen to your business, even if Google’s position in the marketplace drops or they change how they’re routing traffic to you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am absolutely, 100%, recommending that you take action, today, to make sure that nothing bad happens to your business. As I said in my Hospitality Net panel response, who cares what happens to Google? The real question is whether those changes represent a threat to your business. Now is the time for you to consider how to diversify your channel mix, the mix of business that comes to your website and drives traffic and revenue for you. You need to start by working to improve conversion rates when traffic arrives on your web and mobile channels. I know I’ve been talking to this point about traffic, but what happens when traffic shows up is even more important. Assume, for instance, that your digital channels produce 100,000 per month in revenue. If your current conversion rate is, say, 3%, even a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in that number equates to an extra 5,000 to 10,000 per month from the traffic already visiting your site. More importantly, it gets you more data about your customers that you can use to connect with them through other channels. That’s also why you need to expand your horizons when talking about what conversions are on your website. For instance, conversion isn’t just a sale. It could be customers opting into your email list, or downloading a whitepaper, or following you on social media. Each of those has an economic value to you. Imagine, for instance, that your average sale is 100. It could be 1,000, it could be 100,000 too. But for now, let’s make it a hundred bucks. Consider that maybe 5% of all email addresses you collect will turn into a sale within a year or so. That is what we tend to see at a minimum over time. That means that every email address is worth at least $5 to your business in future revenue. Even a social media follow is worth a buck if 1% of those folks turn into a sale over time, too. There’s tremendous long term value in turning your traffic into connections who can later come back and buy from you. So you want to put some focus there. And those conversion events increase the return on spend from your paid media activities, too. So it’s a win on that level also. And, of course, email and social can then become a larger share of your traffic over the long term so that you’re less dependent on Google. It’s a win on every single part of the scoreboard. Next, you want to think about the core and explore method that I’ve talked about before and will link to in the show notes so you can check it out. But put most of your efforts, maybe 80 to 90%, into core activities that drive the majority of your traffic and revenues today. So that could be things like content marketing, that could be things like SEO, that could be things like paid search. At the same time, you’re going to use the remaining 10-20% of your time and your energy and your budget to explore new opportunities. Those could be referrals from influencers or creators. It could be testing a new social platform or content campaign, something you haven’t done before. The idea is to try to improve your overall traffic and revenue from new sources and diversify the mix of sources driving traffic and revenue to your business. One place you’re going to want to start exploring in 2025 is ranking in these alternative AI search engines as well. You can ensure you show up the places that your customers are starting to test so that if, in fact, people do switch to ChatGPT or do switch to Perplexity, you’ve got a shot at capturing those customers as well. I’m already seeing clients getting small numbers of visits from those channels. And in my own case, we’re getting a very small but growing number of visitors each month from Perplexity, from ChatGPT, and from Microsoft Copilot. None are huge yet, but it’s a start. And it’s a sign that we’re doing the necessary things to capture customers who are making a switch. Now the best part of taking an approach like this is that these actions ensure you win whether Google stumbles or whether it continues as the market leader. If Google makes changes that impact your traffic, you’re already working to offset those declines. If Google gets beaten in the marketplace by an AI startup or its antitrust challenges kick it in the butt, again, you’re already working to offset those declines. And if they maintain their dominant position, you’re still growing your traffic and revenue from no sources. That’s a formula for success in any case, and it’s the place you want to be. So I want to go back to where I started. I cannot see any way that Google is dead by the end of 2025. Next year will not be the end of Google. I still think, though, that they’re going to be a vastly different company at the end of 2025 than they are today. If you assume that Google’s share of your traffic, and certainly your share of unpaid traffic, is going to decline, and assume that Google’s going to be okay with that, then the right activity today is to take actions now that diversify the sources driving your traffic. Position yourself to win no matter what happens to Google. Ultimately, that’s a bet you should be willing to make. And if you take the right actions now, Google. A bet you’re almost certain to win. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 440. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Revisiting Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
One of the big themes behind Thinks Out Loud over the course of its 400-plus episodes is how you can bypass gatekeepers and still grow your business. The emergence of artificial intelligence in marketing and customer acquisition introduces an entirely new way to approach that goal. Or does it? Does artificial intelligence provide you a tool kit that allows you to bypass Big Tech? Or does it allow Big Tech to place more gates between you and your customers? In this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, our company founder and president, Tim Peter, takes a look at the role artificial intelligence might play in helping you bypass gatekeepers. He also looks at how AI helps Big Tech maintain its market dominance. And, finally, this episode posits some ideas for how you can start connecting directly with your customers no matter what happens down the road. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links OpenAI – Wikipedia Anthropic – Wikipedia Perplexity AI – Wikipedia When you give a Claude a mouse Google and Kairos sign nuclear reactor deal with aim to power AI – Ars Technica Microsoft deal propels Three Mile Island restart, with key permits still needed | Reuters The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI PDF link The Value of AI in Today’s Classrooms Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) The Best AI is Now Free For Everyone: Revisiting Will Your Customers Use AI? (Thinks Out Loud) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) Why AI Makes Customer Experience Even More Important for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 427) Revisiting Bundling, Unbundling, and Customer Acquisition (Thinks Out Loud) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) AI is the Bear: Learning to Be a Better Marketer in the Age of AI (Thinks Out Loud Episode 422) An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) You might also enjoy this webinar Tim Peter recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 23m 24s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 437 of the Big Show and I think we have a really cool show for you today. We know that gatekeepers gonna gate. You’ve heard me say this many, many times on this show. I’ve also heard a number of people proposing that artificial intelligence might bypass the gatekeepers. It might be the way that we finally get to take gatekeepers and shove them completely out of the way. You know, connect directly with our customers in every single situation. For instance, the hospitality industry is continually looking for something that will bypass gatekeepers like Expedia or Booking.com or Google. By far, the most likely use case where that could occur in the next bunch of years is the emergence of AI agents. And I’d like to dive into that use case for a moment so you have a sense of what we’re talking about. Because this could apply beyond just travel, beyond just hospitality. This could be something you see in retail, this could be something you see in a B2B context. There’s all kinds of places where, in theory, this could take the place. This could let you connect directly with your customers. And the premise here is that customers would have one or more agents that would search for, in this case, travel on their behalf. For instance, I’m taking a trip to New York City in a few weeks for work. I need a hotel near the offices of the company I’m visiting. I’m also having dinner with colleagues while I’m there, so I’ll need flights and ground transportation that get me to my hotel and then back to the airport in time for the meetings that I have and in time to make my flight. I need all of the options that I choose to comply with my client’s travel policies. I need flights and hotel stays that also get me the most points in my preferred loyalty programs; if I’m traveling, I want to accrue my benefits. And of course, I want to optimize my time during the trip so I’m not out of the office or away from my family any longer than is necessary. That is a case that I would love to outsource to an agent. Seriously. I would absolutely love to have this in my pocket or on my desktop right now. I’d love to be able to type a prompt that says, “Hey, agent, go do this. You know my preferences. You know what I need. Here’s where I’m going. Here is roughly when I need to go. Make that happen and report back to me with a couple of options I can simply say yes to or try again.” I mean, wouldn’t that be cool? And there are some interesting beta projects that I’ve seen. But an actual agent that I could give a simple prompt to and that understands my preferences does not exist today. Period. We’re probably a couple of years away from that existing in real world terms. Probably. Maybe by the end of next year. Maybe by the end of 2026. But today, it doesn’t exist. And keep that in mind. Another great agent use case that I’d love to see, this is my own personal one. I’d love a robust, cross device, cross platform search engine. If you’re like me, you have conversations with customers, and with family, and with friends, across an array of devices and apps. You’ve got email. You’ve got social media, both public and DMs. You’ve got text and WhatsApp. You’ve got MS Teams and or Slack. You’ve got articles and newsletters you’ve read on Substack or LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram, and a wide array of websites. And you probably find yourself asking from time to time, “Where did I read that? Was that in an email? Was it a text? Was it an article?” I know I do. Wouldn’t you love to have a way to search across all of those sources? Not for possible answers, not just a regular Google search, but for the actual thing you read or sent. Maybe make it time bound, like only things you’ve interacted with in the last couple of weeks. Based on conversations I’ve had with others, I don’t think I’m alone on wanting something like this. And despite some good work in this area, the solution I’m proposing does not exist today. One of the reasons is there’s nothing that connects all of the various data sources of the two use cases that I’ve just given you. The one thing that might is something like the operating system either on your laptop or on your phone, and we’ll come back to that in a second. The last use case where AI could have a major impact on the way people interact with brands and businesses in the future — or at least one last use case I’m going to explore today — is extended reality. So that would include things like virtual reality and augmented reality. Some folks refer to this as the final computing platform. This is what everything will be like at some point in the future. Think things like smart glasses or other wearables. That provide data about the real world as you interact with it in real time, creating content and immersive experiences on the fly, virtual reality games and education that continually update using generative AI to deepen the experience. There is no question in my mind that generative AI undoubtedly will provide huge benefits in these areas. They can pull content from a wide array of sources. They can generate content on the fly and narrate it or provide visual cues as needed. Today, these types of experiences are definitely limited by things like robust connectivity, which is getting better all the time, the weight of the device, And very much related to that, battery life. We are probably — I’m going to make a guess here; I’m clearly not the expert here, but I’m basing this on what other folks have said — we’re probably 6 to 10 plus years away. We’re talking the 2030s in all likelihood before this becomes a reality. Which is not that far from now. I go back to the Bill Gates quote that I’ve used many, many times that we always overestimate the change we will see in the next two years and underestimate the change we will see in the next 10. So what things might look like in the middle of the 2030s, which shocker, is only 10 years away, could be a dramatic difference from where we are today. Think about where we are relative to 10 years ago. In 2014, in late 2014, if I was talking to you about artificial intelligence and how people would be using it in their day to day lives, the fact that 1 in 9 people use it every single day and 24 percent of workers are using it at least once a week. That was unthinkable 10 years ago, now we talk about it very much like a commonplace thing. So, we’re going to have technology challenges to overcome. We, I mean, we as a society are going to have technology challenges to overcome. Battery life and weight plus the ability to stream heavy visual content quickly are likely the big barriers that have to fall. We also know it’s true that 6G mobile connections will start rolling out commercially in 2030, which could fix at least the streaming question. If battery life and battery weight and device weight fall pretty quickly as they are doing, you know, what we’re likely to see in 2034 seems plausible. And much like I talked about with agents, I’ve seen early stage companies working towards all of these. I want to be clear, I absolutely welcome their potential success. I’m confident that somebody will eventually succeed at all of these. I also think it’s true that these tools simply don’t exist in any real form in the real world today. It doesn’t mean they won’t. But the thing where I think we need to be really conscious is that none of these tools seem likely to come from some unknown startup. Some of the pieces, sure, but probably not the overall experience. And there’s a major reason why this is likely to be so, in my view. The simple fact is that, at least right now, artificial intelligence favors gatekeepers. AI is expensive as hell. You need lots of money to make these models work. You need lots of data, which is expensive as hell. You have to have significant computing power, which, say it with me, is expensive as hell. You require brilliant researchers who are expensive as hell. And you consume massive amounts of energy to make these things work, which, again, is expensive as hell. Google and Microsoft literally are signing contracts for their own nuclear power plants to meet their energy needs. That’s not a joke. That’s a true story. These things require a ton of expensive resources in terms of money, in terms of data, in terms of compute, in terms of researchers, and in terms of actual power. That’s crazy. So it’s not super likely you’re going to see small companies come out of nowhere with these things. Probably. If you think about who the huge big, uh, if you think about who the big AI players are, well, we’ve got Google. Obviously, they’re a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Microsoft. Again, a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Amazon. Ditto. Facebook. Ditto, ditto. We’ve got OpenAI. Who is the parent of ChatGPT? Well, they’re a disruptive startup, for sure, originally set up as a non profit, with massive funding from, uh, Microsoft, who’s a big time gatekeeper. Okay, so what about Anthropic, the makers of Claude? They’re another disruptive startup, featuring a bunch of ChatGPT alumni, and they got massive funding from, oh wait, Amazon and Google. Huh. You’ve got Perplexity. Perplexity is another disruptive service, and it features founders from Meta and OpenAI, and they’ve had significant investments from, among others, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean. Huh. That’s kind of interesting, right? And if VR, AR, and extended reality, XR, come along at scale in the next 5 to 10 years, well, who do you think is going to provide that? I mean, let’s see, the current VR devices come from Facebook and Apple. Augmented reality on mobile phones mostly comes from Apple, Google, and Samsung, the last of which runs on Google’s Android OS. Smartwatches, which are another potential AR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google and Samsung. Again, more or less running Google software. And the most popular smart hearing devices, another potential AR or XR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google. Are you beginning to notice a pattern here? The reality is, big tech is working to remain a gatekeeper. They’re trying to close off all the avenues by which someone else could come in and shove them out of the way. Even the startups are deeply connected to big tech players. In addition to their own efforts, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have invested in organizations like Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity that are most likely to shove them out of their membership in Big Tech. Almost all of these folks, plus the other players in AI, are also using either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to run their servers. Again, Big Tech still collects a toll in those cases. And remember how expensive it is to run a real, robust, and relevant artificial intelligence. Even if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, they’re still going to need to fund their ongoing operations. I also don’t think Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and their other investors Put all this money into these startups without expecting a return on that investment. They’re going to want some payback here. In other words, if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, do you think it’s likely you’re going to be any better off than you are today? In short, there isn’t a white knight coming to rescue you from big tech with artificial intelligence. AI isn’t a key to unlock the gatekeeper’s gates. It’s just another way gatekeeper’s gonna gate, even if it turns out to be a different gatekeeper. It’s unrealistic to expect some new technology to suddenly disrupt and completely bypass Big Tech. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Big Tech has a lot at stake. They’re gatekeepers. They’re not going away without a fight. If you want to bypass Big Tech, you’re going to have to take a lesson from Jose Serrano, a character in the classic baseball comedy Major League . And to paraphrase his famous line, “do it yourself.” It’s up to you to create a direct relationship with your customers. It’s up to you to create memorable experiences that will bring your customers back to you again and again and again. It’s up to you to create a brand that customers will seek out by name. Think about it. I regularly quote Jeff Bezos famous question, “What won’t change as we go forward?” Even if the platforms and technologies and tools that your customers use change, They’re still going to seek out businesses and brands that they trust… or not. You’re still going to need to separate yourself from your competition… or not. You’re still going to need to find a way to get customers to connect with you directly… or not. You get the picture. AI isn’t a key. It’s another lock if you’re not continually looking to build direct relationships with your customers. You’re helping the gatekeepers keep their gates in place. You’re helping them build those locks. Your job is to get customers to connect with you directly. That’s the key to unlocking gatekeepers’ gates. I’m going to link to a couple of episodes in the show notes where we talked about how you can do that. And yes, you can and should use AI to help you do that more efficiently and more effectively. I’m going to link in the show notes to a few episodes on how you can do that too. The last thing that I would encourage you to do is to keep listening for more ways you can build those connections with customers. Because the other big key to bypassing big tech is to keep learning. I’m confident you can do it. I’m confident you can bypass Big Tech. And I’m looking forward to seeing how well you do it. The thing you have to remind yourself is AI is just one more place the gatekeepers gonna gate. If you want to unlock those gates. You’re going to have to do it by connecting with customers directly. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode. As well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 437. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . You can find me on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it this week by using the Twitter handle @tcpeter. And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep hitting me up on Twitter, sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Revisiting Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one way to succeed next year. And, truth be told, it goes beyond success just in your business. I don’t mean to say that business success isn’t important. Of course it is. But, business success often follows from success throughout your life. Most successful people seem like they’re accomplished in many areas… because they are. They’re not focused solely on being their best selves only at work or only at a given hobby. It’s the idea of being your best self that’s at the heart of this conversation I want to have this time around. What does “being your best self” look like in practice? What can you do to achieve it? And how does it apply not only in business, but across many areas of your life? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – Wikipedia 8 Traits of Flow According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) wheel of life – Google Search Navigating Life’s Spheres: Your Guide to the Balance Wheel | Love Light & Inspiration The Vor Game – Wikipedia "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud Episode 358) Revisiting "What Are We Doing Here?" How Are You Holding Up? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 316) Lessons Learned: The TPA Anniversary Show (Thinks Out Loud Episode 420) Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 26m 05s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: The Only Way to Succeed Next Year Well hello again everybody and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 444 of the Big Show, and I think we’ve got a really cool episode for you today. Most of what I’m going to talk about in this episode, on the surface, has little to do with marketing or digital or business strategy, the topics we typically talk about here. I don’t have any big predictions for 2025 yet, or any major recap of 2024, you know, those are coming. And if you only care about those topics, you might want to skip to your other favorite podcast right now and then check our future episodes for that content. I’d recommend against that though, because what’s also true is that what I plan to talk about today has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy. I suspect it will be obvious why shortly, but I’ll explicitly call out the reason at the end for you. The thing is, as we come up on the end of the year, I have a problem with the conventional wisdom that almost everybody spouts off about almost every holiday season. You know, you’ll hear people say that it’s time to look back at the year you just experienced and what went well and what didn’t go well and what did you learn from those experiences. They’ll tell you to look ahead at what you hope to accomplish, and your goals for the new year, and what you’re going to do more of, and what you’re going to do better. Most people, many people, will tell you to spend time with family and reconnect with old friends. People will say, “You really need to make the most of this time. You never know how much longer you’ll have with grandma or grandpa, or your parents, or whomever.” I hate this advice. Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t want to challenge the conventional wisdom around what you do for the next two weeks. You should look back. You should look ahead to what you want to accomplish, and you absolutely should spend time with the people you love, and reconnect with old friends, and enjoy this time with your family. My problem isn’t “Why aren’t you doing this during the holidays? “My problem is, “ Why aren’t you doing this every single day and week and month throughout the year? ” Seriously. Yes, we should all use every opportunity. To look back at what we learned, we should use every opportunity to look forward to what we hope to accomplish. And we all should spend more time with family and friends and the people we love. If I wanted to be funny, I would say, “Notice how I listed friends, family, and the people you love into three separate categories?” You know, in truth though, if they’re not the people you love, maybe the problem isn’t that, it’s that you maybe shouldn’t categorize them as family or friends. Maybe the reason they’re not the people you love is something you need to work on, and more on this in a bit. The reality though is don’t spend too much time with toxic people. And if everyone you know is toxic, Then I suspect they’re not the problem, and I will have much more on that a little later, too. At any rate, when we’re talking about how you use this time, I think you really need to set yourself up for success every week and every month all year long. And I mean success in a broader way than just what you do in your business. You may remember that I talked about a balance wheel or a wheel of life in last week’s episode. I’m not going to recap the whole process for you, but the idea is that this provides you a great time and a great tool to take stock of where you are in every area of your life that matters to you. Work? Sure. But also family and friends and your mental and physical and financial well being. The great thing about an exercise like this is that you get to decide which of those areas are important to you. You also get to decide how satisfied you are in each of those areas, and you get to decide, once you’ve taken a look at that wheel, which ones you want to work on, and the order you’ll do that work. That’s something you can do all year long, and that’s how you succeed next year. This isn’t about New Year’s resolutions, either, and it certainly isn’t about, you know, hustle culture, just “doing more.” Don’t get me wrong, hustle culture can be useful, to a point, but it’s usually focused solely on your work. It usually thinks solely in terms of, what are you going to turn out today from a work perspective? Success in work is up to you and obviously important. It’s something I talk about on this show all the time. Work often is a huge contributor to the meaning in our lives. It’s also not the only thing that gives our lives meaning. In fact, I would go so far to say it shouldn’t be the only thing that matters to give your life meaning. Instead, I’m talking about being the best version of yourself in all of the areas of your life that matter to you and that give your life meaning. And there’s a way that you can do this to drive improvement throughout your life, all year long, where New Year’s resolutions fail. New Year’s resolutions don’t tend to work for two reasons, for at least two reasons. I mean, one of the big ones is that they often aren’t necessarily seen as fun. But the two big reasons are, one, that there’s no consequence, really, if you break them. You might feel bad about it for a couple of days, but eventually it’s just something that happened and you move on with life. And the second is you have to wait an entire year for them to come back around again. If you didn’t accomplish this year’s New Year’s resolutions by, you know, if you haven’t made progress by the end of January, oh well, I guess it’s over. No big deal. We’re drawn to New Year’s resolutions because the first day of the year is symbolically important. And that symbolism has a certain power, one that our brains latch on to. It’s really important to our minds, that date, because it’s imbued with so much culture and tradition. There’s research that backs this up, by the way, that our minds just get wrapped around specific dates. Days like New Year’s Day or the first of the year as being hugely important. There’s also research that backs up what I’m about to share that’s just kind of crazy. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who to credit for this one. So while there will be links in the show notes for many of the things I’m talking about, there won’t be for this one. A Google search wasn’t helping me out. I will certainly update the links later if I can find it. In any case, the further we get away from January 1st, the less power it holds over us. Its symbolism dwindles. Here’s the funny thing about that research, though. It showed that January 1st, isn’t the only symbolically important date in our lives. Other dates have meaning, too. For instance, your birthday is a pretty big day. We give it a certain power in our minds. If you’re married, your wedding anniversary is another one of those days. If you have children, your kids birthdays have a certain power. And any of those can be used as days where you start something new or reassess or have the drive to start again, to renew yourself. Each of these are opportunities to reinvigorate and renew your focus on the things that matter to you. But brace yourself, because the research found something even stranger. It turns out almost any day can hold that same symbolic power, as long as that date matters to you. Which is crazy, because it really means that almost any day is an opportunity to reinvigorate yourself and renew your focus on the things that matter to you. That’s incredible when you think about it, because now we’re not talking about New Year’s resolutions. We’re talking about where am I starting from today. Now the funny thing is, if you find that too abstract a concept to get your head around, in terms of how you would execute that, there are two days that almost everyone recognizes as powerful And those are the first day of the month and the first day of the week, which means you don’t have to have New Year’s resolutions. You can have new month resolutions and new week resolutions. You can renew and reinvigorate every month and every week. You don’t have to think about what matters to you and what you want to change next year. Just think about what you want to change in January, and then again in February, and again in March. You can do the same every Sunday or Monday too, depending on what you consider the first day of the week. It could be the first day of the week, it could be the first day of your work week. You, all you have to do is take a few minutes and make a short list of what you’re going to work on from your balance wheel this week. Then do it again the following week, and the following, and so on. There’s this great hidden benefit to it, compared with New Year’s resolutions, by the way, that if a single week doesn’t go as planned, it doesn’t throw you off for the whole month or the whole year. You just reset on the following week, focus on what matters to you that week, and work towards becoming more completely yourself. And the great thing is, whether you do this 12 times a year, or 52, or some number in between those, I mean, we can all have a week that gets away from us, you will end up growing as a person. Over the course of those 52 weeks, you’ll end up building better relationships with the people who matter to you. Those outcomes, that focus, is what I mean when I’m talking about the only way to succeed next year. In this case, success isn’t just a business concept, it’s a life concept. It’s how you grow as a person. Now the funny thing is, that growth has other benefits beyond just the obvious. And that’s where this does have something to do with marketing or digital or business strategy. In fact, it has everything to do with marketing and digital and business strategy. Why? Because the greatest successes in marketing and digital and business strategy, and pretty much anything else in life, occur when you’re your whole self, when you feel good about yourself, when you’re able to bring your entire being to the moment and to the thing that you’re working on. I met somebody new and a client the other day whose approach just absolutely thrilled me, filled me with joy. He was so thoughtful and so present and so clear minded about his work and his life and what was important to him. He was so clear about what he thought he could do well and what he thought he couldn’t. He set appropriate boundaries with the people in the room without any argument or any drama. He simply wanted to focus on doing his very best work and supporting the team as a whole in the best way that he could. He is, already I’m finding out, just a delight to have met and work with. At least from what I can see on the surface, everything is going right for him. And I think it’s because he’s true to what matters to him. If you look at the people who constantly gripe that nothing ever goes right, they’re almost always at least a little bit at fault. Now, hang with me for a second. Because this is the internet, let me say right away, of course there are exceptions. Unfortunately, far too many cases exist where people are discriminated against or find themselves in abusive situations or have serious health issues. On a personal level, I’ve lost multiple family members and dear friends to things like cancer. I know people who struggle with mental illnesses and other very real problems in their lives. Situations like that absolutely suck. There’s no two ways about it. And I offer anybody going through anything like that nothing but peace and comfort and good fortune every day going forward, starting today. I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the people who you encounter from time to time — we all do — who really don’t have any major issues in their lives in any real terms and still find ways to bitch about everything in the world every day, right? In high school, by the way, one of my teachers, a priest as it happens, once told me the difference between bitching and complaining. It’s pretty big. Complaining is when you talk about your problems to someone who can do something about them, who can help you improve the situation. Bitching is when you talk about your problems to everybody else.* You know, and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with bitching every now and again if it helps you move past something that’s bugging you. I bitch to my wife regularly about whatever things that are going on, whether trivial or significant, that has drawn my attention on any given day or in any given week. We all do. That’s normal. If you’re doing it all the time though, you know, maybe the problem isn’t with what’s going on in the world. Maybe it’s how you’re reacting to it. So with all I’m that out of the the way and speaking only about those who bitch about quote-unquote, “everything” — as well as those of you who simply want to find new ways to succeed — the simple fact is you can change your outcomes by changing your outlook. And I know that might sound trite. But it’s true, the groundbreaking work around flow, that is the state of operating at peak performance, you know, fully in the zone, identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, depends on three factors. And those three factors are, you’re working towards a single clear goal. That goal matters to you, it’s meaningful in your life, and the work challenges you without overwhelming you. It, it causes you to push yourself. When you’re working with flow, you feel energized across many areas of your, areas of your life. You’re happier as a person, you’re more fully yourself. In other words, working towards your goals will make you feel better in pretty much all the other areas of your life. So even if you don’t love where you are in your career, or maybe your company is struggling and you’re not in a position at the moment to do a lot about it. But if you imagine you’re spending time each week and each month learning from what you’d accomplished in the prior week or month, that would move you towards a meaningful goal of self improvement. Imagine if you were truly present for your family and friends and the people you love, that would move you towards the meaningful goal of building stronger and healthier relationships. Even when you can’t find flow at work, you can find flow in the other areas of your life, Which are areas that are going to continue to exist even as you change jobs and careers over the course of your working life. Working in this way on yourself helps you become a more fully realized version of yourself, which actually helps you become more focused and thoughtful at work. And quite possibly help you move forward as a digital marketer and strategist. And if not, you’ll still be fulfilled outside of work. You know, that’s really a great thing. It reminds me of a quote I love about strategy from the Lois McMaster Bujold book, “The Vor Game,” which you should totally check out. A character in the book says, “The key to strategy. Is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to victory.” Now, in fairness, she follows that up by saying, “ideally,” acknowledging that it’s not always easy to have all paths lead to victory every single time. Still, it’s worth choosing as many as you can that help. So, if you’re not necessarily having the best place at work, working on yourself is something you can control. Working on your relationships is something you can control. And that goes the other way, too. If you’re doing well in work, it allows you to say, “Okay, maybe I can’t control what’s happening with my relationships or a specific relationship, because the other person is not being everybody. They can’t control it. You would like them to be, but you can work on yourself and you can work on your work.” So ultimately, it’s working towards all paths helping you to succeed. If your success matters to you next year though, you need to think beyond just business and just marketing and just digital. You need to think about the kind of person you want to be in every area of your life. You need to think about the kinds of relationships you want to have, the people you want to spend your time with outside of business as well as within it. And then do the work in those areas to improve your relationships with the people that matter to you. Make sure you focus as much as you can on the areas and people that give your life meaning. Working towards improving in those areas helps you find flow in your activities, which will help you feel more fulfilled overall. And finding greater fulfillment overall helps you persevere during the tougher times of your days and weeks and months that undoubtedly will happen. Remember that you don’t have to think about New Year’s resolutions or wait for January 1st to roll around to make changes. You get to reset your objectives and renew your focus every month and every week. So the point I want to leave you with today is that your ability to be the person you want to be is entirely in your hands. And becoming the person you truly want to be is, in my book, The only real way to succeed next year, and every year after that. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. I hope you get to spend it with people you love, and that everything next year goes really well for you. Just remember, a lot of that is within your hands, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. Before I get into the credits, for the show, a quick programming note. We’ll be posting some of the best of Thinks Out Loud over the next couple of weeks during Christmas and the New Year’s Day holidays. I hope you’ll enjoy those. And we’ll be back with entirely new episodes for you the week of January 6. In the meantime, I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 444. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. Thanks for hanging with me as I ventured a little further afield. I’ll be back to our regular topics. But let me know what you think of the episodes we do here. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. I hope you have a happy New Year and we’ll talk with you soon! The post The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
I’m having a ton of conversations lately about how AI will affect the future of work and employment. Many of these conversations start off with questions like “What will AI do to my job?” And, of course, “What happens to my job in the future?” AI is a big deal. No two ways about it. But, here’s the thing: AI is not the future. You are. You have control of what your future looks like. Sure, AI could affect pieces of your life. It already does. But you have lots of say in terms of what your life looks like overall. How will that work? How can you ensure that AI plays the right role in your life? And how do you make sure that your job — and more importantly, your life — reflects the future you’re looking for? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Ikigai – Wikipedia Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Joyful Life — the Government of Japan Madam C. J. Walker – Wikipedia Wheel of Life/Balance Wheel Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI: Mollick, Ethan: 9780593716717: Amazon.com: Books Giving Thanks 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 441) The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud Episode 358) Revisiting "What Are We Doing Here?" How Are You Holding Up? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 316) Lessons Learned: The TPA Anniversary Show (Thinks Out Loud Episode 420) Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407) Revisiting "We Owe it to Our Customers to Make Their Lives Better" (Thinks Out Loud) Revisiting "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 27m 01s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: AI Is Not the Future. You Are Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud . Your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 443 of The Big Show and thank you so much for listening today. I am so thrilled you’re here and I think we’ve got a really cool show for you today. This one’s going to be a little bit weirder than normal, because I’m kind of in a philosophical mood. I’ve got a bunch of stuff on my mind that, you know, is a little outside of what I normally talk about on the show. I’ve been having just a ton of conversations lately with people about their careers, and the effects of artificial intelligence on their personal development, and where things might be going on a personal level for them, and for me, and probably for you. And so I thought it was okay to talk about this. You know, part of my Rutgers Business School Exec Ed classes focus on AI in marketing and AI in customer service, which is partly what led to this, and I’ve been having a bunch of different mentoring and reverse mentoring conversations that have really brought this to the fore. And I thought it made sense to start with a few baseline predictions for where artificial intelligence will be in the next year, as relates to you, as relates to your job, as relates to your career. And I want to be really clear. These are assumptions. They are, I think, solid assumptions. I think they’re well grounded assumptions. But I’m not a hundred percent confident on any of these. I’m like sixty to seventy percent confident, some a little more than others. But you know, there’s obviously room for things to move here if, if we see AI models continuing to plateau, I will be more confident that these will hold true. If somebody comes out with a big breakthrough that we’re not expecting, you know, GPT 5 or something like that, then maybe I, these get a little more uncertain. But nonetheless, it seems obvious at this point that AI probably isn’t going to take your job. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but if you were listening to this show, if you’re a marketing professional, if you’re a content creator, if you’re somebody who focuses on, you know, connecting with customers using digital tools, here’s what you’ll Your job isn’t going away in the next year. No two ways about it. The current generation of tools simply exhibit too many hallucinations and too many inherent biases to completely replace most of the knowledge work that I run into regularly. Sure, obviously, lots of folks are already outsourcing a wide array of tasks within jobs. And some leaders are starting to ask, okay, can we use these tools to outsource specific jobs? That is absolutely happening. But most of the marketing and sales and business development roles that are common among the show’s listeners are supported by AI, they’re augmented by AI, and they probably will be for a while. They’re not outright going to be replaced by artificial intelligence. Sure, that could change. I also suspect we’re going to have some reasonable amount of heads up if that starts to happen. I’m paying some attention to various financial analyses that suggest we can do more with less and, you know, handle losses by attrition. But the likelihood that your job’s going to go away is pretty slim. I’ve been doing this kind of work for quite a while and that approach of how do we do more with less and how do we, you know, deal with loss by attrition, you know, we shrink by attrition, let people Migrate themselves out over time. That’s not even remotely new. Folks have been doing that for a long, long time. I don’t see why this time around is any different. We will absolutely see more artificial intelligence in people’s lives. Almost certainly baked into existing tools more so than through the exact acquisition of lots of new tools. You’re undoubtedly seeing that right now. I mean, when’s the last time you had a conversation with a vendor of anything where they didn’t bring up AI at some point in the discussion, right? I mean, that’s just the way it works right now. Another thing that I think you can easily expect is we’re undoubtedly going to see some AI backlash in the next 9 to 12 to 18 months. I’m already seeing this. I don’t think this is much of a prediction. This is happening now. I’m not predicting the future. I’m, you know, I’m broadcasting the present. CEOs and CFOs have been signing off on a huge number of pilot programs, a huge number of tests. And they’re starting to demonstrate impatience for results. The joke I keep hearing from senior executives right now is, “I’ve got more pilots than Delta. I want outcomes.” That’s just the reality of the world we live in. And, you know, obviously there’s a macro economy that we’ve got to think about. There’s if you live in the United States, there’s going to be a change in presidential administrations. Who all knows what happens there? I mean, that will certainly swing this in one direction or the other. On that one, I’m not going to make any huge predictions because it’s tough to tell. But the backlash is definitely coming. People want to see more results, and we should expect them to be asking for more results. very much. But here’s the thing I know about the future and here’s where I’m going to take a hard left turn in this discussion. Because it’s not about artificial intelligence. When you think about your career and you think about where you want to be, AI is not the future. You are. You get to decide if you’ll use these tools and how you’ll use these tools. You get to decide what you want your work to look like And you get to decide what you want your life to look like. You get to decide how to make that happen. I know that might sound crazy, but it’s true. You can do something today that has nothing to do with AI. Or you could do something that absolutely leans into AI, if it really matters to you, if you really find that interesting and valuable. You get to decide. So I would suggest, ignore the predictions. There’s a, there’s a quote that I love that says, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Which, okay, obnoxious, arrogant, but true. You get to decide. The question I’d ask you, the question I ask folks when I’ve been having these conversations is, what do you want? What are your goals? What matters to you? Where do you want to be five years down the road, and ten years down the road, and fifteen years down the road? And I don’t mean in exactly what job or exactly what your work day will look like, because that’s too hard to tell when we get down the road. But what excites you? What gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you say this is some place I want to spend my time. It doesn’t just have to be about work, by the way. This is true for life generally. This could be about relationships. It could be about health and fitness. It could be about money. It could be about personal growth. It could be about your community. What are the kinds of things that you want to do that interest you? What are the kinds of things that make you happy, your life worth living for you, make you feel valuable? You may be familiar that there’s this Japanese concept called ikigai, which refers to your sense of purpose, what’s your reason for living. And it’s a really simple concept, right? When you think about it, it’s, it’s the intersection of four things. It’s what do you love? What are you good at? What is the world value? And what will it pay you for? That’s it. How do you find the spot that works for you? Not just today, but longer term, over the course of your life. There’s lots of ways you can do this. There’s, there’s a great tool, there’s a technique using something called a balance wheel or sometimes a wheel of life. I’ll post a couple of links in the show notes or you can Google at your leisure. To assess where you are on six to ten attributes and see where you’re feeling pretty good about where you are and where you feel like you’re falling short in terms of achieving balance. You basically rate yourself on a scale of, it depends on which one you use, you might do it on a scale of one to five, you might do it on a scale of one to ten. But as you think of the various things in your life that matter to you, your, your personal life, your personal growth, your. Health, your money, your relationships, your community, and you rank yourself, and you kind of draw this picture of, Oh, do I have a nice circle here? Or do I have, you know, sort of this lumpy, bumpy mass that says, I’m falling short in some areas in my own life. You then use that to say, cool, this is where I want to set my goals. This is where I want to improve this year and next year and the next. I want to go ahead and move forward and grow and get, you know, a better shaped wheel here. The most successful people I have ever known always have self directed goals in more than one part of your life. And success isn’t just about goals. A case of financial success or professional success. It means where do you feel like you want to do well? It’s thinking purposefully about what matters to you and then working towards it. What is the future you want? The future can’t just be something that happens to you, it’s something you work towards, it’s something you strive for, it’s something you reach for. And you don’t want to worry about how you’re going to make that future happen. Believe it or not, that’s, that’s Not the way to do it. It’s easy to find ways to shoot down ideas when you’re thinking about what you’d like it to look like. Don’t do that. Seriously, ignore that. Think about what you want, what really matters to you. Think big, right? I see people far too often, you know, in mentoring relationships, especially where people talk about their goals in incremental terms, and that’s okay. That’s totally okay, especially if we’re talking about where do we want to be a month from now. But if you’re thinking about your life, if you’re thinking about the next few years, whether it’s a year from now, three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, What would it look like if your goals were 200 percent or 300 percent or 1000 percent larger than where you are today? Think about what your world would look like. Think about how you would live and act in that world. Yes, your goals should be achievable in some reasonable time frame. The fact is though, you’re undoubtedly a thousand percent better today than you were at some earlier point in your life. You’re almost certainly making more money than you did ten years ago, and probably more money than you ever thought you might make ten years ago. If you think 3 percent raise every year over the last decade, you’re Today, you’ve increased your income more than 34%, right? That’s a pretty big lift. You’ve already achieved that, so why not increase your salary by 34% in five years or three in many cases? I bet you’re making 10 times what you made at some earlier point in your career or in your lifetime. And that’s just the financial side. I bet you’re 10 times better at something you used to struggle with. I know I am in lots of areas. I’m sure that’s true of you. People grow. We get better at things over time. The best part of thinking like this, by the way, is Is that if you fall short when striving for something ten times bigger or better than what you’ve done in the past, you’re still gonna end up in a much better place than you are today. Okay, maybe you don’t achieve a thousand percent growth. Cool, you only achieve five hundred percent growth. That’s still pretty great, and that’s still where you wanna be, regardless of what happens in the world around you with artificial intelligence or anything else. I obviously have to acknowledge that it’s not always easy to do this once you’ve set those goals. That’s okay. You want to have the goals as a guiding light, as a signpost, as something you’re moving towards. And of course, not everyone has the same advantages in life. It’s one of the reasons why I’m always inspired by people who manage to overcome great challenges in their life. I was reading the other day about a woman who I’ve heard about many times over the years, and I find her to be one of the most inspirational figures ever was this woman named Madam C.J. Walker. Madam C.J. Walker was born two days before Christmas in 1867, so 157 years ago. She was a black woman and the first member of her family ever to be born outside of slavery in the United States. Right? So this is somebody who came from some serious challenges compared to many people. Over the course of her life, she developed, marketed, and sold a wide range of cosmetics and hair care products for black women in a very different environment, right? We’re talking about the early 1900s. And according to Wikipedia, this is a quote, “She is recorded as the first female self made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records.” The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes her as the first woman self made millionaire in America. That is genuinely remarkable. What’s more remarkable to me, is that she also built schools and training centers. Again, according to Wikipedia, in addition to training in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to be financially independent. Again, that’s remarkable. She didn’t just build her business. She helped thousands, possibly tens of thousands of other women, build successful businesses and successful lives. She’s an icon. I mean, it’s absolutely remarkable. And she did all of this as the child of formerly enslaved people. Imagine the world she worked in and lived in, day in and day out. Now imagine all the possibilities that are out there. I am being dead serious. I could not be more serious about this. When I say I’d rather live in a world when I’m competing with artificial intelligence, when I’m competing with a computer, than with the racism and sexism in the world that Madam C.J. Walker had to deal with every day. I’ve never experienced anything remotely like that. Bring on the robots, man. They do not scare me. And I would say they shouldn’t scare you. Seriously, there are much bigger problems in the world for lots of people, and there have been much bigger problems in the world for lots of people in history than anything we’re dealing with right now. I just don’t see it as a huge issue in terms of how it’s going to affect your day to day. If you think about it from a certain perspective and if you work at it from a certain perspective. And the last thing that I want to say about this, the last thing that I want to focus on and really remind you is that as the saying goes, It’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a long race. A boss of mine used to say that your professional life roughly lasts for 40 years. From roughly, if you think about it, you start your career more or less when you’re 25, you end your career more or less when you’re 65. So that’s a 40 year period. And you can divide that into four 10 year quarters. If you’re listening to this show and you’re 30 or younger, you’ve just barely started the first quarter of your working life. You have so much time ahead of you. So no matter where you are at the moment, if it feels like it’s a, you know, Too hard or there’s, you know, too much change going on. You got a long way to go. Just take a breath and keep moving forward. You got a long, long way to go. If you’re in your 30s, you haven’t yet reached halftime of the game, right? You’ve got, again, a ton of ways to go. If you’re in your mid 40s, you still have another 20 years ahead of you, or roughly double your career to date. Think of everything you’ve done over that 20 year period and what you still can accomplish in the next 20 years. The best part is you can apply this to adulthood more generally. You don’t have to just think about this from a work perspective. That covers everything from about 15 to maybe 85. You could divide that into, four quarters of 17-and-a-half years a pop. You get my point. The point is you’ve got a lot of time in terms of that. Think of what you can accomplish during those periods. You’ve got a ton of time ahead of you and an immense amount of time to become anything you want to be, whomever you want to be multiple times over. In fact, don’t let one day, or one year, or one decade define you. Keep moving, keep growing, keep learning. The only direction is forward. The best thing about our lives is that we’re time travelers. We move forward one day at a time, every day. We move forward one year at a time, every year. You can’t go back. You get to go forward. I turned 56 this week, and I’m about to add “published nonfiction author” to my bio for the first time ever. I also have plans to finish a novel, probably by early 2026, to boot, just because I want to. Because it’s an itch I want to scratch, it’s something I want to do. Who knows what else I’m going to do in the fourth quarter of my career, and the next 25 to 35 years of my life? I am as excited for this as anything I’ve ever done. So when I sum all this up, am I worried about AI? Not really. I’m not. I think about it. I recognize that the world will undoubtedly change, and probably dramatically in the next decade, whether AI is the cause or — something else is that we haven’t even seen yet. I keep learning, and I keep preparing, and I keep planning in case things change quickly. I can’t necessarily predict everything that’s going to happen, but I can make plans to be ready to adapt to things that I haven’t thought about yet. You know, there’s the old quote you’ve probably heard, “Plans are useless. Planning is essential.” I also keep learning about the people around me and what they need and how I can help them. I use AI as a tool, too, to help me learn and grow, not just about artificial intelligence and the internet and digital, but about a whole host of topics. You should absolutely read, you should absolutely check out Ethan Mollick’s book, “Co-Intelligence, Living and Working with AI.” In particular, check out Chapter 7, AI as a Tutor , and Chapter 8, AI as a Coach , for more on how you can use AI to learn and grow. Just remember, though, that there is so much possibility in the world. Connect with customers and with people. And with their humanity, let the machines be the machines, be a good human, learn what people need and how you can help them achieve it, enjoy where you are as best as you can every day. Life is hard, trouble will find you on its own, you don’t need to go looking for it. Enjoy the moment you’re in as best as you can. Build strong relationships with the people who love you and people you love. Make the best choices you can with the information you have available to yourself. And then the rest will take care of itself, mostly. As I said at the top, AI isn’t the future. You are. And that’s going to be true as long as you let yourself do it. Personally, I can’t wait to see what you do. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 443. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Google faces the most serious challenges in its history right now. And any stumble Google suffers also hurts your business. Organic search, paid search, local search, metasearch, product search, and all the rest depend on Google getting lots of traffic. If Google loses, even a little, you stand to lose too. So how does Google lose? How likely is it to occur? How does that loss affect your business? And what can you do about it to ensure that you win, no matter what happens to Google? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. How Google Loses (Thinks Out Loud Episode 442) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google. – WSJ Whose brand does Google want to build? – Biznology Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 437) Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) – Tim Peter & Associates Will Marketers Bet that Google Wins the AI Economy? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 433) Revisiting Google Big AI Problem (Thinks Out Loud) Google Loses its Antitrust Case: Why That Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 429) Diversifying Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud Episode 430) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Google Lacks Vision: Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q1 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 412) Is Google Doomed? And Other Top Digital Trends for 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 408) Is Google Telling Us That Organic Search Doesn’t Matter Any Longer? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 392) Does Google Lack Vision? Big Tech’s Earnings Q3-2023 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 401) Taking the Long View: Big Tech’s Earnings and the State of Digital Q2 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 421) How YouTube Became a Giant in the Podcasting World – WSJ Google is inserting search links into webpages in the Google App now – The Verge Google and the DOJ make their final arguments in the ad tech monopoly case – The Verge Data centers powering AI could use more electricity than entire cities YouTube dominates US TV viewership, beating out Netflix, according to latest Nielsen data The Battle of YouTube vs. TikTok Netflix Eats Up 15% of Global Downstream Traffic, almost as YouTube and TikTok Combined | News | FOCUS ON Business – Created by Pro Progressio You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 23m 06s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: How Google Loses Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 442 of the Big Show and I think we’ve got a really cool show for you today. I’ve been thinking a lot about Google and everything that’s been going on with them with regard to the antitrust trials, with regard to, um, AI, with regard to what’s happening in terms of consumer behavior, and it’s really brought to light for me how Google loses. Now you’re probably thinking, that’s ridiculous. Google is as big as they can possibly be. There’s no way that Google loses. And you might be right. But I want you to think about this for just a minute. And I want to start by saying, I don’t care what happens to Google. I care what happens to people downstream of Google. Which, I suspect, includes you and your business. Marketing consultants and professional speakers and thought leaders, in other words, people like me, have pretty much always told marketers that it’s a bad idea to build your brand on rented land. The problem with building your brand on rented land, of course, is that the landlord, the folks who own the land, can change the rules on you, more or less at any time, just whenever they choose to. The benefits that your business receives from that rented land, in terms of reach and traffic and engagement and revenues and profits, could then vanish overnight. What’s funny is that those of us who told you not to build your brand on rented land, then turned around and talked about the benefits of SEO. Which is like, wait, what? Right? SEO is rented land too. Let me say that again. SEO is rented land. So is paid search, pretty much by definition. So, you’ve built your business on SEO, and you’re now getting lots of traffic from search and the like, and the rules of the game are changing. And, don’t get me wrong, there are some things like brand and search that are built more around your brand activity. But you’re still dependent on the rules laid down by somebody else, somebody like Google. As we’ve seen with the rise of Google features like paid search ads and people also search for and meta search and things along those lines, Google doesn’t automatically have to send people directly to you even when those people ask for you by name. I still do think that that’s the best way to win at search is to have people search for you by name. You’re also still dependent on Google treating that search as though people are really just asking for you. And some of the evidence is that Google’s not going to do that. Most of the time they will. Google seems to realize that it’s good business for them to give consumers what they ask for. They also know that it’s good business for them to monetize the traffic that they get any way that they can. Letting brands get traffic for free? doesn’t necessarily translate into long term brand value for Google. I wrote a piece for Biznology way back in 2011 called, "Whose Brand Does Google Want to Build?" And if I can give you a spoiler for an article that is almost 14 years old, the brand they want to build is their brand. That’s whose brand Google wants to build. It was true 14 years ago, it’s true today. For those who’ve been very successful with SEO, for those who’ve been very successful with search generally, any change to the algorithm or to Google’s business practices can be bad for your business. In fact, that’s what we’re seeing across the board with clients today. Google is changing some of the way that they’re doing things, some of the ways they do things. And the clients, the folks downstream of Google are starting to feel the effects of that. Now, that’s true in the small, in the immediate term, in the details. Let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. There was a piece in The Wall Street Journal last week called “Googling is for Old People. That’s a problem for Google,” written by Christopher Mims. It’s a really good article. It summarizes quite a few of the things we’ve talked about here over the last year. And it opens with this remarkable lede: If Google were a ship, it would be the Titanic in the hours before it struck an iceberg. Riding high, supposedly unsinkable, and about to encounter a force of nature that could make its name synonymous with catastrophe. I mean, damn, that’s, you know, that’s really putting a fine point on it, isn’t it? I’m not necessarily as bearish on Google as Christopher Mims and The Journal are. I do agree somewhat though. This is something I’ve been talking about for a while. As Mims’ colorful metaphor suggests, no one thought the Titanic could sink when it was pulling out of port. If they did, we wouldn’t still be talking about the doomed ship over 110 years later. I’m not convinced that Google is doomed, and this is a topic I’ve thought about a lot over the last couple of years. We’ve had at least a dozen episodes in the last 12 months addressing that very topic. I’m more like 50/50 on whether Google loses its seat as king of the digital hill, whether it is in fact a digital Titanic waiting to happen. Google’s got a number of paths to victory. They’re also facing enormous threats. Now, I promise you, I’m going to bring this back to you and your business before we’re done today. I also want to explain Google’s situation in more detail first, right? So, let’s start with some numbers. In the last four quarters, Google has made roughly $340 billion in revenue and roughly $94 billion in profit. Roughly 57% of those numbers comes from search advertising. Google That’s about $194 billion in revenue and roughly $54 billion in profit. Now, if we assume that Google has 90% share of the search engine marketplace, then every point of search share that they lose — every time 1% of users get their answers from Amazon or TikTok or ChatGPT or Bing or Perplexity or Claude — that costs Google roughly $2 billion in revenue and about $597 million in profits. If you’d rather limit those numbers instead to Google’s 50% share, give or take, of paid advertising, it actually is worse for them. Each point of market share is around $3.9 billion in value to them in revenue, and over a billion dollars in profit. Google can’t afford to lose much search activity without seriously hurting their business, without seriously hurting their top line and their bottom line. In fact, that’s probably the single largest reason I can’t write them off as doomed. They have enormous incentive to prevent that from happening. And that’s not their only benefit. Far from it. In terms of the arguments for Google maintaining its dominance, there’s a bunch. Start with they own Android, the most used mobile operating system on the planet, and I think the most used operating system in computing history. They own Chrome, which is the most used browser on the web. They own YouTube, which is among the most watched video networks in history. It’s bigger than Netflix, it’s bigger than TikTok in terms of watch time and viewers. In the US, only Disney is bigger than YouTube in terms of watch time. And a couple of years ago, research showed that Netflix was a bigger driver of data bandwidth consumed on the internet, but I suspect that’s changed. They’re as big as anybody out there. Additionally, as I’ve just mentioned, their core search product has dominant market share. And YouTube is right behind it in terms of search query volume. And Google Search is the default search engine in iOS. Add to that that Google has assembled one of the greatest research and product development teams in history. And, apart from making absurd amounts of money, they’re sitting on a war chest of around a hundred billion dollars. Those are all massive advantages that are going to be very hard for anyone to overcome. They’re also not insurmountable, as tough as that is to believe. Just like the Titanic was absolutely sinkable. Just having all those advantages doesn’t guarantee that Google wins. Let’s look at some of the arguments against them. Let’s talk about how Google loses. First and foremost, they’re a one product company. Remember, 57% of their revenue and earnings come from search. The vast majority, the overwhelming majority, comes from search. Ignore Chrome and Android. As big as those may be, they don’t directly contribute to Google’s revenue or earnings. They’re helpful, and I do think people using those do lead people to search on Google more. That’s also not a guarantee. Nobody’s paying money for those in any meaningful sense. It also doesn’t appear clear that Google’s making all that much money, if any, from Artificial Intelligence at the moment. You could argue they’re making some through Google Cloud and I talked about that on our recap of Big Tech’s earnings a few weeks ago. But AI itself is not generating the kinds of revenue that Search is. Next, of course, as Christopher Mimms talked about and as I’ve talked about a lot on this show over the last year, The U. S. Department of Justice, a boatload of state’s attorneys generals, and regulators in the EU are suing Google in jurisdictions all over the world and winning those lawsuits. Google has had way more setbacks in court than victories this year. Some of those setbacks are leading the folks prosecuting them to call for Google to divest Chrome, stop paying folks like Apple to be their default search engine, Or, open up their data to competitors. Those are big, big penalties with long term effects to Google’s success in the marketplace. If that weren’t enough, there’s lots of evidence that younger consumers are conducting some search activity on social channels like TikTok, and especially doing so for things like e commerce purchases. Now, that’s particularly bad for Google because, as you might imagine, e commerce is a significant driver of Google’s advertising revenues. Who else is going to pay for search ads than the people who are actually selling something at the end of that search? There’s also a lot of evidence, both anecdotal and real world, that search results are getting worse. In part, that’s because spammers are attempting to flood the search engine with crappy AI generated pages. That’s definitely happening, happening, and partly because of Google’s own actions or in particular inactions as the marketplace is changing to that point. Another big risk is Google doesn’t seem able to move quickly today in the way that they once were. They are very much caught in what’s known as the innovator’s dilemma. You’ve probably heard about this before. But Google’s got this problem that if they make major changes to their search results to better serve the needs of searchers, like incorporating AI answers all over the place, it could hurt their revenues. So they don’t want to do that. But if they don’t make major changes to their search results, it could cause more people to find somewhere else to get their answers, which also hurts their revenues. So they don’t want to do that either. In either case, they’re at risk of losing searchers and the revenues that follow from that. That’s a trap. That is a bad place to be. And it’s the kind of thing that has happened to many dominant firms over the years. It’s what happened to Microsoft in the 90s. None of that is what you call, you know, good. My last concern for Google, and I think the last big threat to Google, is that they’ve been a talent magnet. And I’m not convinced that they are. That it’s still true that they are today. Ten years ago, if you were a young product manager, or a young developer, or a young AR researcher just starting your career, Google probably represented your dream job. It was at least pretty high on your list of places you really wanted to work. Today, if you’re a young product manager or developer or AI researcher, is Google still the place you think of as being the coolest, most cutting edge opportunity to build something amazing? I don’t know that it is in the way that it was. If I were starting my career today, and I wanted one of those kinds of jobs, I’d probably be looking at a company like OpenAI, or Perplexity, TikTok, NVIDIA, maybe even SpaceX. There just seem to be better, more interesting opportunities out there. And yeah, Google might still be on the list. But it would be much further down that list than it was, you know, even five to ten years ago. So when you put all those elements together, you talk about the one product problem, you talk about their legal troubles, you talk about younger consumers looking at other search engines, you look at the fact that search results are getting worse, you look at Google’s inability to move quickly, and all of that driving less interest from young talent. That’s how Google loses, that’s where they could be in deep trouble. Now, I started by saying, I can’t bet too heavily against them. I’ve already detailed their strengths, and they definitely have ways to win. Ultimately, Google’s fate will be decided by consumers. If consumers continue to get good answers from Google, they’ll keep searching there. If they don’t, or if they find some place where they can get a better answer, they’re going to go there instead. That’s how Google’s in trouble. That’s where Google will lose. But if consumers still like the value they’re getting from Google, they’re not going to move that quickly, and not that many of them are going to move. If you’re like most companies, you’re getting a healthy share of your traffic and revenues from Google. So if people move, that’s not just bad for them, it’s bad for you too. Looping all the way back to how I started this episode, I actually don’t care what happens to Google. I care what happens to you. If Google stumbles, even if they stumble a little bit, your business could still feel real world consequences. Google could sneeze and you could be the one who catches a cold. Which is why you need to take action today. Remember that there are always four paths of success for your business: You can get more customers, you know, reach people you haven’t reached before. You can get your existing customers to spend more with you every time they buy. You can get existing customers to buy more often. And of course, you can do a combination of all three of those. Get more new people who come to you, who spend more money each time they come, and who come to you more often. But doing these things depends on diversifying your marketing mix. And there are a number of steps you can take there. First, sourcing great content that your customers regularly look forward to. Using that content to develop organic and paid social media followings on the channels your customers prefer. That could be TikTok, Pinterest, or Instagram if you’re a B2C company. Or it could be LinkedIn if you’re a B2B company. But the point is you need to be where your customers are. You need to build partnerships with creators on social and in the real world to gain even more engaging and productive content. You need to grow your email list and increase your email effectiveness so you can keep in touch with people and bring them back to your site and to your sales channels more often. You need to focus more on PR activities to keep your brand’s name in front of customers when they’re ready to hear from you. And you need to leverage video to reach and engage customers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you check out our past episodes on “The CORE Methodology” and on “Diversifying Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do,” which I’ve linked to in the show notes, you can get more detail on how you can do each of these successfully next year. Regardless, that’s how Google loses. None of this means that Google will lose, but if they do, that’s how it’s going to happen. What’s most important to me, and should be most important to you, is that I’ve also made it clear how you can win. I don’t care whether or not Google loses. I care whether or not you do. Don’t worry about what happens to Google. Worry about what happens to your business. And even better than worrying, take action today to ensure you get what you want. Then you don’t have to worry about whether Google or anyone else loses. You just have to watch yourself win. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 441. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post How Google Loses (Thinks Out Loud Episode 442) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
It’s Thanksgiving time again. Which means it’s time for me to share what I’m thankful for in 2024… and what I’m looking forward to in 2025. What am giving thanks for this year? And, more importantly, how do they help you learn and grow as you look ahead to next year? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Giving Thanks 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 441) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links How to succeed in MrBeast production (leaked PDF) Gratitude 2023 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 403) Gratitude — 2022 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 365) Thinks Out Loud Thanksgiving 2021 + Bonus Content! (Thinks Out Loud 332) Jim Collins – Concepts – The Stockdale Paradox An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) Is AI Destined to Make Marketing — and Music — Worse? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 432) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) Lessons Learned: The TPA Anniversary Show (Thinks Out Loud Episode 420) Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407) Revisiting "We Owe it to Our Customers to Make Their Lives Better" (Thinks Out Loud) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using the travel rig: Shure SM57 Cardioid Dynamic Instrument Microphone and a IK Multimedia iRig Pro Duo IO USB audio interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 17m 51s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Giving Thanks 2024 Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 441 of The Big Show and thank you so much for tuning in today. I really do appreciate it. This is a strange week for us around TPA Global Headquarters or Thinks HQ. Because this is Thanksgiving week here in America. And if you’ve listened to the show for any period of time, you probably know that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s not even close. For those of you outside of America who may not be familiar with this, Thanksgiving is a time to spend time with family and friends and the people we love and to reflect on the year and to be thankful for all that we have. It is so tied to family and friends and community that many people celebrate something they call Friendsgiving. That’s a gathering with the family they’ve created, rather than the family that they were born into, right? If they aren’t able to travel home to see their parents, or see their siblings, or maybe they don’t have parents or siblings any longer. They gather together with the people who matter to them, and celebrate their friends. And I love that. It is so great. And it causes me every year to think about what I’m thankful for. Which of course it does. I mean, that’s the whole point of the holiday, right? If I wasn’t thinking about what I was thankful for, I kind of missed the point. But I love that aspect of it. It gives me an opportunity to reflect and say, what am I thankful for? And I always start with the fact that I have so many amazing people in my life. And I’m going to start first, because this is a business podcast and a marketing podcast and a strategy podcast, I’m going to start on the work. I get to do good work with great people all the time, and I’m incredibly thankful for that. What’s also true, and what’s most meaningful to me, is that I keep to get learning and growing every year. And that’s what I’m going to spend most of this episode talking about. It starts with my friends. I have the greatest group of friends in the world. We had a nasty hurricane here in Orlando just about a month ago. And multiple people across multiple states, out of the storm’s path, reached out before the hurricane to offer my wife and I a place to stay. Their concern was immediate and heartfelt. There was no hesitation. But even beyond the big things, it’s the little things. I have a couple of long running group chats with various friend groups that provide me with non stop conversations filled with good humor and great advice. I am smarter, and I’m happier because of those friends. I also love my mentors and my reverse mentors. Now, sometimes there’s an overlap between my friends and my mentor community. Actually, frequently, my friends are great mentors to me, and many of my mentors are great friends to me. But I want to spend a moment calling out the folks who mentor me separately. We’ve all heard the expression, "it’s not what you know, it’s who you know." And I think that’s true in a roundabout way. I don’t mean you will succeed because people will just give you things without you doing any work. I just don’t think that tends to be true. Are there "nepo babies", you know. Do things like that occur? Sure. But what is more to the point, in my sense, is that if you surround yourself with really great people and you surround yourself with really smart people, they will lift you up. They will help you learn. They will help you grow. You know, there’s a, there’s a business rule that I try to follow all the time that says who, not how. Instead of, you know, when I come up with a new problem, it’s not how do I fix this, or how do I do this? It’s who do I know who already knows how to do this, or who already knows how to fix this? There was a document that went viral a few months back that was Mr. Beast’s guide to how his company does what it does. And one of the things he talked about in that document was That guide was how much he loved consultants, because he said they’re cheat codes, right? They already have the answer to the problem that you need to solve. Now obviously I loved that because I’m a consultant, but I also loved it because it gets to a core point of the people you know, the people who you surround yourself with have immense amounts of information, far beyond what you know or can learn in a reasonable amount of time on your own. But you can just call them up and ask them, or text them, or ask them. And that’s where my friends and my mentors and my reverse mentors come into play all the time. They’re the who. They are the who I know. Because they’re able to help me all the time. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, reverse mentors are people who are earlier in their career who I not only mentor about business and how I think as a senior leader and a senior strategist and all the like, but they mentor me about how they live in the world, especially as it relates to technology and media. They teach me how young Millennials and Gen Z live in the world as it is and as it will be. I mean, they are young Millennials and Gen Z, and they simply invite me to understand more about the way they live their lives. Those folks constantly help me grow, both my mentors and my reverse mentors, and that growth is hugely important. The single biggest mistake I see people make as they advance in their careers and as they advance in life, frankly, And probably the thing I fear the most in my career and in my life is failing to keep learning and growing. The reality is the world continues to change. I’m in my 50s, and far too frequently I hear people in my age cohort and older, and sometimes younger I’m afraid, talk about the world as moving too fast. Or, much more to the point, how " everything was better back in the day" right? And, if it’s not obvious, I disagree with that view. I genuinely just can’t get on board with that. Of course, some things were better. Some things were also worse. And of course, a remarkable number of things are more or less the same. The differences, far too often, are what we make of them. If you think about 10 years ago, there’s plenty of things you can look back on and say, yeah, that was definitely better. There are plenty of things you can also look at and say, yeah, that was definitely worse. And ten years from now, that will be true too. The differences will be what we make of them. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound naive here. Of course there are things that we’ve lost. I also think we hurt ourselves when we focus solely on the loss. I look at it this way. You’ve heard me talk before about ships and shipwrecks. And that comes from a quote from Paul Virilio, who said, When you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. Think about the changes we’re experiencing right now with artificial intelligence. We’re able to accomplish some tasks much faster, much more easily. Our access to insights and knowledge has jumped manyfold in just a few years. If we choose, we now all have an incredibly helpful assistant available to us that’s able to quickly and easily research and learn and complete various tasks. Again, it’s a cheat code. That’s a good thing, right? And yes, these assistants also haven’t changed our everyday lives all that much yet. Their biggest benefits are probably still a year or, I don’t know, three away as agents become more sophisticated. It’s also true that AI is already causing some shipwrecks. We know they have bias. We know that they’re helping to create a bunch of misinformation that’s flooding search results and social media. We know that they’re leading some companies to eliminate some jobs. Those are all bad things, right? But at least a couple of them, the misinformation and the companies eliminating jobs, aren’t driven by the AI, they’re driven by the people making those decisions. The technology is just what it is. It’s the people that we have to think about. And you have to ask yourself, which of these is the reality? Is it a good thing or is it a bad thing? Is it a ship or is it a shipwreck? I think it’s both. I think the reality is that both are true. Is AI making the world better or worse? Will AI make the world better or worse? I just don’t think that’s the right question. It’s not a question of better or worse. It’s a question of better and worse. Again, ships and shipwrecks. You really can’t have one of them without the other. The thing is, I’m incredibly thankful that I get to participate in the conversation around how companies and individuals use these tools. I’m incredibly thankful for my friends and my mentors and my clients and my students at Rutgers Business School and all the rest of the people I talk to Who challenged my thinking around artificial intelligence as well as the other tools that preceded it, like social and mobile and the internet. They keep me thinking. They keep me sharp. They keep me growing. They keep me asking questions about whether we’re building ships or shipwrecks. Or, ideally, ships that at most only occasionally wreck. That’s what excites me about the world that’s coming. And yes, sometimes it’s frightening. Sometimes it hurts. Growth is scary. Growth sometimes hurts. If you work out, if you spend time in a gym, you know that your muscles sometimes hurt after a workout. You’re sore. Some of the best lessons I’ve ever learned in business and in life came from tough lessons. Sometimes they hurt. Sometimes I was sore. I’m still super thankful for those learnings. And my mentors, whether they’re traditional mentors or reverse mentors, continually remind me to see both sides of the story, to see the ship and see the shipwreck, and work to change the things I can around them. I am so thankful for their support. I’m so thankful for how they keep me learning, and growing, and getting better at what I do. There’s one other group that I think I have to talk about here. And it’s the fact that I count you, the people who listen to this show and comment on LinkedIn or YouTube or in email, as a part of my mentor and reverse mentor group, too. I’m always learning from you. The questions you ask, the comments you leave, the emails you send. They help me learn and grow as well. Thank you so much for listening and for commenting and connecting and helping our team to grow this community. I genuinely appreciate all that you do to make me and the team here better at what we do. So, if you’re here in the U. S., I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family and friends and food and fun. If you’re outside the U. S., I hope you have an opportunity over the next few days or over the next week to reflect on what you’re thankful for, and also to enjoy time with family and friends and food and fun, too. I don’t think you need a holiday for that. Do that every chance you get. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds. I can’t wait to see where we’re going in 2025. And I can’t wait to share with you and learn from you about how we can keep learning and growing together over the course of the next year plus. So have a happy Thanksgiving wherever you might happen to be. And I guarantee we’ll be back here with more soon. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 441. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, , I know I just said it a moment ago, but I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending me things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Giving Thanks 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 441) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Just a few months after its 26th anniversary, Google faces more threats heading into next year than ever. The rise of artificial intelligence provides users with an alternative way to search. Regulators, legislators, and courts are trying to break its market dominance. And younger consumers, especially, increasingly turn to social platforms to find the answers they need. And, yet, in the midst of these threats… Google just had the most successful quarter in its history. So, what’s the reality? Is Google doomed in 2025? Or is its continued position as king of the hill assured next year and beyond? Most importantly, how will whatever happens in the year ahead affect your business? I don’t think Google is doomed, far from it. But I do think their most likely responses to the changing marketplace isn’t necessarily in your best interest. If nothing else, you should expect the ongoing shift from organic to paid search to continue. And there’s no way that’s good for you. So, whether or not Google is doomed, what should you do as you move into 2025? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Is the new ChatGPT Search a significant threat to Google? The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) Trump says Google has ‘a lot of power’ and he would do ‘something’ about it — but stops short of favoring a break-up Trump’s admin puts new light on Google’s potential breakup JD Vance Live at RemedyFest – YouTube Digital Markets Act – Wikipedia DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly Google Earnings Release PDF link OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows — The Information OpenAI and others seek new path to smarter AI as current methods hit limitations | Reuters OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Are Struggling to Build More Advanced AI – Bloomberg Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) Google Loses its Antitrust Case: Why That Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 429) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 26m 21s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Is Google Doomed in 2025? Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 440 of The Big Show. And thank you so much for tuning in. I think we have a really, really cool show for you. I want to start by saying, A, this is a follow up to last week’s episode that looked at the future of computing and Big Tech’s earnings for Q3 of 2024. And what I didn’t do last week was spend much time talking about Google. With everything that’s going on with the world of artificial intelligence and the competition that Google is seeing from AI based startups and the like, the question that people keep asking me is, will next year be the end of Google? And I want to get the big question out of the way right up front. There is no way that Google is dead by the end of 2025 . And I don’t think it’s terribly likely that they are anything other than the dominant player by the end of next year. I’m not going to predict that SEO is dead. I will not predict that Google is dead. No way. At the same time, I’m fairly certain that Google will be a vastly different company at the end of 2025 than they are today. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a decent amount of money that Google is not as dominant in your world by the end of next year as they are today. Let’s put this in terms that you can easily see. Go to your website’s Google Analytics traffic acquisition report and change the duration that you’re looking at for the last 90 days or the last 12 months. You pick. It doesn’t matter to me. First, take a look at the total sessions you’ve received during the period you’re reviewing. Then, instead of just looking at the default view, which groups traffic by Session Primary Channel Group or something similar. Click the dropdown that shows Session Primary Channel Group, and change that to Session source/medium. Now, in the little search box after you do that, in the report, type "Google" and hit enter. This will show you how many sessions you’ve received during the selected period and, importantly, the percentage of traffic that Google, and especially Google/Organic, represents to your business. I want you to make a note of three numbers. First, write down the number of sessions from Google/Organic. You can also note the total traffic from Google and its share of your total traffic. If you’re like most businesses, I’d expect Google’s overall share to be somewhere between 25 and 65% of your traffic, and Google Organic’s share probably to be no less than, say, 10 or 12%, and could be as high as 60%, depending on how much advertising you do or how much you rely on organic search. I doubt it’s at the top end, though there are certainly edge cases where that could be true. The actual volume of traffic you get varies too widely by business and industry for me to hazard a guess at what the actual number will be. So right now I’m just talking in percentages. For my hospitality industry friends, keep in mind that traffic for Metasearch shows up under a different source/medium. It could be Sabre or Amadeus or Mirai or Siteminder or DerbySoft, ROIback, folks like that. We’re not going to worry about that traffic today. Here’s the bet I’d be willing to make 12 months from now. The share of traffic that comes from Google/Organic will be down no less than 5 percent from where it is today, if not more. Your Google traffic overall and your Google/Organic traffic level might increase, but the share of organic traffic, that is, free traffic that you get from Google today, will almost certainly decline by the end of 2025. And I have four big reasons for thinking that Google will be a different company and that as a consequence, your organic traffic will decline. The biggest is that Google needs to keep monetizing their search engine results pages. If your overall Google traffic goes up in the next year, It’s probably because you’ve traded some type of paid search, whether traditional CPC ads, metasearch, or something similar, For what is today free, organic search. The second reason is because Google continues to increase the number of zero click search response pages. Those pages provide answers to customers and don’t drive clicks through to the sources of those answers. I’m really confident that will drive down the amount of organic traffic you get over the course of the next year. The third reason that Google will be a vastly different company is what I started the show with. Google faces competitive challenges from alternative search engines and search experiences. One set of alternatives includes AI based options like ChatGPT’s new search feature and Anthropic’s Claude. Another is dedicated search engines like Perplexity and Bing. You have things like Apple Intelligence and iOS. And yet another alternative comes from consumers conducting more searches on social sites like TikTok or LinkedIn where we’re seeing a definite uptick, no pun intended — good thing because that’s a terrible pun — but we’re definitely seeing an uptick in that behavior. And the fourth reason that Google is definitely going to change is that Google is facing some serious antitrust threats that might prevent them from responding as quickly as they traditionally have. Don’t misunderstand, I would be very surprised if their various antitrust cases wrap up by the end of 2025. I also don’t think that those cases will reach a conclusion that will force Google to change their business model or anything that we’ll talk about in a moment. What I do think is true is that those cases will represent a distraction that will hurt Google’s ability to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace. It is awfully tough to run forwards when you’re looking over your shoulder with worry. Now, before I address the first three reasons in more detail, I do want to spend a moment on Google’s antitrust situation. Remember, I’m not a lawyer. I could be stupendously wrong about what I’m about to say here. My sense, though, is that the antitrust thing is a big honking deal. It is, you know, huge. There are reports that the DOJ apparently wants to strip Chrome away from Google as part of its proposed remedies to the case. That’s a rumor at this point. We don’t know if that’s true, but that’s the kind of thing people are talking about. They’re talking about major substantive remedies, major substantive structural remedies to the way Google operates as a business. And that’s just the cases that Google faces in the U. S. Obviously, the UK’s Competition Markets Authority, EU regulations like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and lawsuits across an array of jurisdictions also affects the reality of how Google does business. Sticking with just the U.S. for now, in any normal election year, you would expect that in an incoming Republican administration. would favor a hands off approach toward big business and that Google might be able to, you know, negotiate a settlement that’s favorable and quickly. At the same time, this obviously is not a normal incoming Republican administration. Instead, they’re a highly populist one, and there’s plenty of evidence they’re no more fond of big tech than a typical Democratic administration might be. The consensus I’ve read from people who seem to know what they’re talking about is that the Trump administration isn’t going to simply walk away from this. I’m going to read you a slightly lengthy quote for a moment here. This is a quote the speaker said, "I think my argument is actually even if you believe that there are network effects that make Google more powerful or make Gemini a more powerful tool within Google, There are actually some real, real issues here with just the integration. So does Google need to have YouTube? Does Google need to have all those other platforms that are built on top of or built underneath the Google umbrella?" The speaker continued by saying, "I think there’s a really good argument that if we want to be pro innovation, we want to ensure that new insurgents can change these things up. That you want to promote as much competition as possible, and you actually want to separate all of those market verticals as much as possible. That’s where I think antitrust is probably the most useful way to think about a solution to what we face." Would it shock you if I told you that that quote is from incoming Vice President JD Vance? That’s not the kind of rhetoric you typically hear. Would it further surprise you that Vance also said, "One final observation I’ll make just about this intersection between competition and innovation. If there’s a person within the Biden administration, obviously the FTC is an independent agency, but Lina Khan is the person that I would point to as the best person, in my view, within the Biden administration." Now, Lina Khan is the person in charge of the FTC, and the FTC is the folks who’ve been going after Google in many cases. So, yeah, that’s not what you might typically expect. Now, maybe the Trump administration will be more, well, let’s call it transactional, and Google can, for lack of a better term, "buy them off" by paying fines or God help us, making changes favorable to Trump’s policies or something. Trump’s rhetoric himself on the topic is decidedly mixed, so who knows, really? I’m going to link to a lot of this in the show notes. I do want to be fair, I’m not remotely going to make any bold predictions here, other to say that it seems unlikely that Google’s antitrust situation will simply go away without the company making some significant concessions or changes to how it does business. My confidence level on exactly what form those concessions and changes might take, I don’t And when they might occur, is pretty low. So, you know, take all of that with a grain of salt, but it does seem unlikely that those cases simply just, you know, vanish. Turning back to my actual topic of expertise, which is the digital marketplace itself, there was a recent discussion at HospitalityNet and on LinkedIn about whether startups like ChatGPT and Perplexity pose a threat to Google. First, there was no consensus among the panel of experts convened by HospitalityNet about whether or not others will beat Google. Personally, I lean towards Google continuing its dominance, at least in the intermediate term. If we return to last week’s look at big tech’s earnings, Google grew its revenues 15 percent year on year to $88.3 billion, and its profitability almost 34 percent to $26.3 billion. It was a record quarter for Google, both in revenues and in profits. The company is sitting on $97 billion in cash. They own one of the most powerful computing infrastructures in human history. They have one of the deepest pools of AI talent in the world. There’s also some evidence, including articles in Reuters and The Information and on Bloomberg that improvement in new AI models is slowing down. In other words, it’s getting harder for AI companies to show improvement versus existing models like GPT 4.0 and Gemini. If that slowdown holds true, success in the marketplace is not going to go to those with the most impressive model, because after all, the frontier models today are pretty good. You’re going to need to see dramatic improvement to separate yourself there. Instead, success will belong to those who do the best job of providing a useful product. To their customers, and Google definitely has the edge there. Remember the revenue numbers I just said like 10 seconds ago? Google has an amazing existing revenue model that simply prints money. No disrespect to ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude. But none of them today has a plan that makes anywhere near enough money as fast as they’re spending it. That’s not a formula for long term success. So, you know, I’m not, I’m not bullish on Google maintaining its dominance necessarily because I think they’re the most innovative or because they’ve done the coolest things. I think they’re the ones that have the deepest pockets and the deepest pool of talent to keep turning to, as well as a model that already pays for itself. That’s just going to be tough for folks to dislodge without a truly disruptive product. Obviously, if a new model comes out that, you know, blows up what we’ve seen to date, then all bets are off. But that doesn’t appear to be the direction we’re headed, at least at the moment. Barring any wildcards, I’m still going to put my chips on Google in this case. Now, at the same time, Google must keep finding ways to monetize their search engine results pages. They’re not going to drive double digit growth year on year without it. And that’s not great for your business, because they’re continually converting formerly free traffic into something you pay for. That’s their right. But that doesn’t mean it’s good for you or your business in the long term. Google keeps increasing the number of zero click search response pages, too. With its AI Overviews product, they’re giving customers answers without driving clicks to the sources of those answers. Again, that’s their right, but again, it’s not great for you or your business. Now, maybe customers will find that they prefer ChatGPT’s answers or Perplexity’s answers or Claude’s answers. My question is, is that any better for you? I don’t think so. If they’re not linking to you, if they’re not driving traffic to you and driving clicks to you, that’s a problem for you. And because of that, I want to go back to the bet I opened this episode with. I said I can pretty much guarantee you that your organic search numbers will decline. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead, by the way, it just means it’s going to be harder to drive traffic from those clicks where you used to get them. And all of those reasons I just gave are the reasons I’m fairly comfortable making the bet that your organic traffic will decline. What I neglected to say, of course, was that you have more than a little control over what happens there. You don’t have to take that as a given. You don’t have to let anything bad happen to your business, even if Google’s position in the marketplace drops or they change how they’re routing traffic to you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am absolutely, 100%, recommending that you take action, today, to make sure that nothing bad happens to your business. As I said in my Hospitality Net panel response, who cares what happens to Google? The real question is whether those changes represent a threat to your business. Now is the time for you to consider how to diversify your channel mix, the mix of business that comes to your website and drives traffic and revenue for you. You need to start by working to improve conversion rates when traffic arrives on your web and mobile channels. I know I’ve been talking to this point about traffic, but what happens when traffic shows up is even more important. Assume, for instance, that your digital channels produce 100,000 per month in revenue. If your current conversion rate is, say, 3%, even a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in that number equates to an extra 5,000 to 10,000 per month from the traffic already visiting your site. More importantly, it gets you more data about your customers that you can use to connect with them through other channels. That’s also why you need to expand your horizons when talking about what conversions are on your website. For instance, conversion isn’t just a sale. It could be customers opting into your email list, or downloading a whitepaper, or following you on social media. Each of those has an economic value to you. Imagine, for instance, that your average sale is 100. It could be 1,000, it could be 100,000 too. But for now, let’s make it a hundred bucks. Consider that maybe 5% of all email addresses you collect will turn into a sale within a year or so. That is what we tend to see at a minimum over time. That means that every email address is worth at least $5 to your business in future revenue. Even a social media follow is worth a buck if 1% of those folks turn into a sale over time, too. There’s tremendous long term value in turning your traffic into connections who can later come back and buy from you. So you want to put some focus there. And those conversion events increase the return on spend from your paid media activities, too. So it’s a win on that level also. And, of course, email and social can then become a larger share of your traffic over the long term so that you’re less dependent on Google. It’s a win on every single part of the scoreboard. Next, you want to think about the core and explore method that I’ve talked about before and will link to in the show notes so you can check it out. But put most of your efforts, maybe 80 to 90%, into core activities that drive the majority of your traffic and revenues today. So that could be things like content marketing, that could be things like SEO, that could be things like paid search. At the same time, you’re going to use the remaining 10-20% of your time and your energy and your budget to explore new opportunities. Those could be referrals from influencers or creators. It could be testing a new social platform or content campaign, something you haven’t done before. The idea is to try to improve your overall traffic and revenue from new sources and diversify the mix of sources driving traffic and revenue to your business. One place you’re going to want to start exploring in 2025 is ranking in these alternative AI search engines as well. You can ensure you show up the places that your customers are starting to test so that if, in fact, people do switch to ChatGPT or do switch to Perplexity, you’ve got a shot at capturing those customers as well. I’m already seeing clients getting small numbers of visits from those channels. And in my own case, we’re getting a very small but growing number of visitors each month from Perplexity, from ChatGPT, and from Microsoft Copilot. None are huge yet, but it’s a start. And it’s a sign that we’re doing the necessary things to capture customers who are making a switch. Now the best part of taking an approach like this is that these actions ensure you win whether Google stumbles or whether it continues as the market leader. If Google makes changes that impact your traffic, you’re already working to offset those declines. If Google gets beaten in the marketplace by an AI startup or its antitrust challenges kick it in the butt, again, you’re already working to offset those declines. And if they maintain their dominant position, you’re still growing your traffic and revenue from no sources. That’s a formula for success in any case, and it’s the place you want to be. So I want to go back to where I started. I cannot see any way that Google is dead by the end of 2025. Next year will not be the end of Google. I still think, though, that they’re going to be a vastly different company at the end of 2025 than they are today. If you assume that Google’s share of your traffic, and certainly your share of unpaid traffic, is going to decline, and assume that Google’s going to be okay with that, then the right activity today is to take actions now that diversify the sources driving your traffic. Position yourself to win no matter what happens to Google. Ultimately, that’s a bet you should be willing to make. And if you take the right actions now, Google. A bet you’re almost certain to win. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode, as well as an archive of all past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 440. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Is Google Doomed in 2025? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 440) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) 23:03
It’s time for Big Tech’s earnings once again. And, this time around there were some notable updates, particularly from Meta Platforms (i.e., Facebook) and Microsoft that hint at the future of computing — and, more importantly, the future of your customers’ digital experience. Meta, in particular, shared a compelling vision of where they’re looking to go as a company, not only for the next few quarters, but for the decade ahead. I’m not convinced they’ll succeed. But I’m impressed by the clarity of vision Mark Zuckerberg and Susan Li expressed. Microsoft, by contrast, has an entirely different approach to the market focused on enterprise vs. consumers. Two different visions, clearly expressed, and clearly focused on the future. How will the future of computing shape your customers’ behaviors going forward? And, most importantly, what do these visions mean for your brand and business? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Microsoft Earnings Call Transcript TranscriptQandAFY25q1.docx Microsoft Earnings SlidesFY25Q1.pptx Facebook earnings call transcript PDF link Microsoft Earnings; Microsoft and OpenAI, Again; GitHub Copilot Adds Gemini and Claude Google’s earnings PDF link 2024 Q3 Earnings Call – Alphabet Investor Relations Amazon.com (AMZN) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool Amazon.com, Inc. – Quarterly results Amazon earnings release PDF link Apple (AAPL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript | The Motley Fool Apple reports fourth quarter results – Apple Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) Building Plans for an Uncertain Future — Big Tech Earnings Q2 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 431) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) Picks, Shovels, and the AI Gold Rush (Thinks Out Loud Episode 414) Anticipating Radical Shifts in Consumer Behavior from AI Adoption: A Look into the Future (Thinks Out Loud Episode 396) Apple’s Vision Pro Shows How to Market New Products and Services (Thinks Out Loud Episode 385) Revisiting "We Owe it to Our Customers to Make Their Lives Better" (Thinks Out Loud) A Far Too Quick Look at the Metaverse, web3, and the Future of Digital (Thinks Out Loud Episode 349) The Metaverse in Hospitality Marketing: Loren Gray Interview (Thinks Out Loud Episode 366) The Future of the Metaverse? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 363) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 23m 02s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 Welcome to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. Well hello again everybody and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 439 of the Big Show, and thank you so much for tuning in. I think we have a really cool episode for you this week. As you know, every quarter I like to look at Big Tech’s earnings and try to understand what those earnings calls tell us about the state of digital. Where are we? And where does big tech see us going? And if you remember last quarter, it was kind of, not that much had changed. There wasn’t a lot to report in terms of, “Oh man, there’s something really, really cool coming down the road.” Or something that we really need to be aware of that will shape our customers experience and shape how we market to them. And then this quarter happened. And I want to be fair, there wasn’t anything where you went, “Oh my gosh, this was unbelievable.” But Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook/Meta Platforms, a company that I probably give short shrift to far too often around here, really went into detail on something fascinating to me, where he talked about the company’s, and this is a quote, “long term vision around AI and the future of computing.” Which, when, when one of the big tech leaders stands up and says, “this is the future of computing,” I think as marketers, it’s a good idea for us to sit up and take notice and say, “Wait a second. Is that something we should be paying attention to? Is that something that might change the way our customers interact with our brands and our businesses over time?” So, while not much has changed in practice over the last quarter, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta CFO Susan Lee’s remarks painted a fascinating view of where they think we are, what the future will be, where they think the next computing platform will be. And here’s the vision as I understand it. Zuckerberg and meta by extension believes we will live in a different world in the not too distant future. That world won’t be dominated by phones as it is today. Instead, it will be dominated by smart glasses providing us information visually and audibly. More through augmented reality than virtual reality. Screens you wear on your face or your wrist will replace the screens you carry in your pocket. This is their vision. And you’ve heard me say, I’ve been not necessarily skeptical about augmented reality, but certainly skeptical around virtual reality. And the fact that I don’t think that that’s a real long term winner. At the same time, they’ve got a very clear vision here, and I think it’s really worth talking about. So they, they’re talking about augmented reality. And that these augmented reality experiences will be powered, in large part, by artificial intelligence. They see that these experiences will also be mediated through AI agents. So, you know, you’ll be wearing a pair of smart glasses. You’ll be walking down the street. You’ll be looking around and be given information about, oh, here’s a store, here’s a restaurant you might like. And you can interact with that to say, “you know what, hey, agent, go ahead and make me a reservation at that restaurant for next week.” And it will just take care of it for you. They also think that advertising will be a core component of the content and the agent experience consumers receive. So we’ve got, we’re wearing smart glasses or smart devices of some kind that provide us augmented reality experiences powered in large part by artificial intelligence mediated through AI agents with advertising at its core. Now the reason I find this so fascinating is because Meta is positioning itself to provide the smart glasses. It already has a partnership with Ray-Ban today where those glasses exist. It will provide the content recommendations, if not the content itself. It will provide the ads. And it will provide the agents used by both consumers and the businesses they interact with. And because gatekeeper’s gonna gate, Meta stands to monetize as many of these interactions as possible. They intend to monetize as many of these interactions as possible. They’ll be selling the physical devices, whether they’re smart glasses, or smart earbuds, or some other form. They’ll be selling the ads. They’ll be selling, or otherwise monetizing, the agents that businesses use to support customers. And they might be taking a share of apps or other upgrades customers use to personalize their devices and make them more useful in their lives. Now, any of that could fail. Starting with, of course, we have no idea if consumers want to be walking around wearing smart devices that are either flashing things in front of their faces or talking to them in their ears all the time. What’s also true is this is a remarkably complete and compelling vision of the future. It’s also a playbook we’ve seen before. Specifically from Apple with smartphones, and as my good friend Mike Moran pointed out to me when we were talking about this, with the iPod prior to that. I’m going to be honest. Up until this earnings call, I used to think that Zuckerberg’s metaverse obsession was solely a defensive play. As you are undoubtedly aware, when Apple launched App Tracking Transparency a few years back, it cost Facebook roughly $10 billion in revenue in just the first year. It made sense to me that Zuckerberg would want to reduce his company’s dependency on other big tech companies’ platforms, primarily Apple. But certainly on Google with Android as well. At the same time, what he’s now articulating is a much more robust business rationale beyond just a defensive posture. In fact, Meta’s remarks, Zuckerberg’s remarks, and Susan Li’s remarks illustrate perfectly why I do these recaps in the first place. They’re not just telling us what they think might happen , they’re telling us how much time and money and human capital they’re investing to make it happen . Mark Zuckerberg literally is betting his company on a future he wants to make happen. They had over $24 billion in capital expenditures this year to date, which is up from $20 billion in the same period last year. Their average R&D spend over the last four quarters has been fully 27% of the company’s revenue. More than a quarter, more than one in four dollars. That’s incredible. And that’s why we pay attention, that’s why we should pay attention to what folks like Mark Zuckerberg, and Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai say about their businesses. Before you think any of this sounds crazy, because it’s easy to look at this and go, “Well, yeah, cool idea, but it will never work.” It doesn’t have to work completely. I mentioned that this is a similar playbook to what Apple did with the iPhone and the iPod. iOS runs on roughly one in six smartphones in the world. But Apple’s services division generated roughly $26 billion in revenue this past quarter and about $96 billion in Apple’s just ended fiscal year, and about $71 billion in revenue. Services were roughly 25% of Apple’s total revenues and roughly 39% of Apple’s earnings in the last year. Almost 40% of their earnings come from services. Now let’s contrast that with Meta, with Facebook, right? Meta has made $156 billion in revenue in the last four quarters and $62.4 billion in profit. In other words, Apple’s services division alone has made 60% as much revenue and 114% as much profit as Meta/Facebook does in total. Even if you subtract the roughly 20 billion Google pays Apple to be the default search on iOS. Apple is still making a third of Meta’s revenues and 80% of Meta’s profits just from services. Moving in this direction would help Meta diversify away from advertising, which is a much more volatile business and frankly the biggest strategic threat they have if consumers stop using Instagram to the same level that they do or stop using Facebook to the same level that they do — which there’s some evidence of — they stand to lose a ton of money. But if they can get people using the next computing platform, even if it takes five years, they’ve set themselves up for long term success as a much more interesting and much more robust company. Those all seem like compelling reasons for Meta to want to win in the next device category. To define the future of computing. Again, there’s no guarantee that they’ll succeed. Overall adoption of devices like smart glasses and VR headsets is still pretty low. I’ll believe people will trade their handheld devices for wearable devices when I see numbers suggesting a bigger trend in that direction. I have never been overly blown away by the concept. Even as somebody who’s generally interested in the idea, I mean, I’d love to have a hands free device. I also don’t want to make the “focus group of one error” and confuse my interest with overall consumer interest . At the same time — and I realize I’m kind of tying myself in knots here — smartphones also didn’t go anywhere for a while. You know, until they did. So when Mark Zuckerberg is talking about the future of computing, he may be on to something here. I don’t think it’s going to happen right away. I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow. But they are setting themselves up for success with a very clear vision that could change the way our customers interact with our brands and with our businesses over the long term. Now as we think about the future of computing, as we think about the future of how that might affect customers, I wanted to point out one other bit from the earnings calls this time that I thought was really interesting. And this one’s, again, a little less fully baked than some other things we might talk about here. There’s a reason I call the show Thinks Out Loud . It doesn’t mean Knows Out Loud. I’m not 100 percent sure. But I have often felt that Microsoft has one of the most compelling strategies around artificial intelligence and around the way they’re bringing their products to market. And in many ways they do. In many ways they are setting themselves up to be a pick and shovels company in an AI boom, in an AI gold rush, right? Very smart play. They may not be a platform that consumers turn to very often, though. And one of the reasons is because they always fall back to wanting to be an infrastructure company. And we’re seeing this a little bit, where their relationship with OpenAI may turn out to be a long term, not negative, but not the positive I once thought it was. For a long time, I assumed that Microsoft outsourced the risk associated with AI while still being in a position to benefit from the upsides. That might be wrong. Instead, it seems that OpenAI can break the deal if and when they develop AGI. As somebody I follow on Twitter said, what’s to prevent OpenAI from simply declaring that the next version of GPT, whether it’s called GPT 4 Ultra or GPT 5 or what have you, is AGI and just exiting the deal? I mean, it would lead to lawsuits, but theoretically they could do it. There’s also plenty of smoke, if no fire yet, that suggests the relationship isn’t quite as sunshine and rainbows as it had been, say, a year ago. I’m going to link in the show notes to Ben Thompson’s outstanding Microsoft earnings recap, um, for more details on that topic. The short story is Microsoft is already discussing incorporating Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini into its existing platforms and products. They talked about this on the earnings call. Satya Nadella talked about giving their customers, who generally are enterprise customers, building artificial intelligence tools on things like Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. Because they’re starting to realize, “hey, that’s what we do. We provide the foundation layer, and then let customers use whatever they want.” Whether it’s OpenAI, whether it’s ChatGPT, excuse me, GPT 4 or GPT 4o. Whether it’s Claude, whether it’s Gemini, they don’t really care as long as you’re using their platform. I want to be really fair. I’m skeptical that AGI is on the immediate horizon. That is a pure gut feeling, and I could be super wrong about it. But there is some early data that seems to suggest that you can’t simply scale large language models to a full artificial general intelligence. I also have to be completely honest about this for people who listen to the show to get deep insights. What artificial general intelligence, AGI, will look like and when it may arrive is way above my pay grade. I have a pretty good feel for consumer products. I spend my days thinking about how customers adopt and use technology products. When I say consumer products, I also mean B2B, how B2B customers think about products. It does not necessarily make me terribly expert at identifying core foundational technological breakthroughs before they make it to customers. In fact, my gut instinct might be worse than others because it’s so far outside my day to day experience. In other words, I’m mostly guessing here when we talk about AGI, so take any guesstimates then for what they’re worth. What I will say is you can see from Microsoft’s behaviors and how they’re thinking about artificial intelligence that they really do like being a picks and shovels company. They really do. Thrive in that world and they’re beginning to realize that being dependent upon solely open AI as their core AI offering probably doesn’t benefit them in the long run. That’s almost certainly why you’re seeing them make the shift and say, you know what, we’re going to stick, we’re going to skip back to the thing that we do best and do well always. So, I do think it’s interesting to see these two very, very different visions of the future when we look at Facebook and when we look at Microsoft. Where Facebook is saying, “we want to define the future of computing. We want to define the future of how customers will interact with artificial intelligence in the long run. And of course, we want to monetize that every single step of the way.” And Microsoft is saying, “we want to be the foundation on which every enterprise in the world puts artificial intelligence to work, regardless of what that artificial intelligence is, regardless of which artificial intelligence tool they choose to use to drive the experiences that their customers are looking for.” So, very, very, very different visions for the future of computing and for the future of where these companies are going. Now, you’ll notice I haven’t really talked about the other big tech firms. I haven’t talked about, you know Amazon. I haven’t talked about Google. I haven’t talked about Apple. I will, possibly next week’s episode, certainly a couple weeks down the road for sure, because Google in particular I think is doing some fun stuff that we need to be aware, and I think we need to talk about some of their competition’s interesting stuff that we need to be aware. The one thing I will say is that, as you might have mentioned, they all had amazing quarters, they all made a ton of money, they’re all talking about a whole host of cool things, and of course, we will dive into those in more detail as we go forward. The big takeaway for this time, though, is both Microsoft and Facebook have provided two They have provided two different, compelling visions for the future of computing. They have provided two different, compelling visions for how customers are going to interact with artificial intelligence. And they’ve provided a roadmap that we can be thinking about in terms of saying, what do we want to do to engage with our customers as the computing world changes around us, as the way that they interact with us on digital channels will move around us. It’s something we’re going to watch really closely, and I do encourage you to keep tuning in to learn more about how you can do that for your brand and business. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode. As well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 439. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep hitting me up on Twitter, sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post The Future of Computing? Big Tech Earnings and the State of Digital Q3 2024 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 439) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Do artificial intelligence and digital more broadly scare you? Do their potential harms keep you up at night? In short, are these tools evil? I don’t think they are. Truly. And, most of the time, neither are the people who create them. That doesn’t mean that AI and digital can’t cause harm for your customers, for your business, and for you. The question instead should be, “How can you keep these tools from causing harm in the world?” And that’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Building a Human Brand in the Age of AI (Thinks Out Loud Episode 398) Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) Is AI Destined to Make Marketing — and Music — Worse? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 432) Will AI Make Marketers Dumber? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 419) Revisiting What Trees Will You Plant? (Thinks Out Loud) Recapping 2023 Part 2 — Personal Lessons Learned (Thinks Out Loud Episode 407) No One is Talking About the Most Important Lessons from Google’s Gemini Launch Kerfuffle (Thinks Out Loud Episode 415) Paul Virilio – Wikiquote Lawsuit claims Character.AI is responsible for teen’s suicide Performing a Project Premortem Risk Matrix Template: Assess Risk for Project Success 2024 — Asana You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 21m 13s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter. This is episode 438 of The Big Show. And this week is Halloween, so I thought we’d talk a little bit about something a little more scary. I am, by trade, training, and temperament, an expert in digital marketing and strategy. And I’ll explain in a minute what I mean by an expert, because it doesn’t always mean what people think. Digital, of course, depends on technology of various stripes. And occasionally someone will ask me whether I’m afraid of technology. There are valid concerns that AI or the internet or what have you causes harms that outweigh their benefits. The question is whether these tools, AI or digital more broadly, are evil? And I mean, that’s a fair question. We see from time to time really terrible things being done here. So let’s start with the landscape of what’s out there. Currently, the big innovation that everyone cares about, of course, is artificial intelligence. But there’s still social, there’s still mobile, there’s still the internet and email and websites and a whole host of other platforms and services your customers and you use every day. We’re also starting to think a bit about extended reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality, and how companies benefit from connecting with customers there. When I say we, I mean me and my company. We’re paying attention to wearables like smart watches and smart glasses. We try to stay current at least a little bit on the state of IoT, that is the Internet of Things. We know that 6G is just over the horizon and will start showing up in your customers hands in about five years time. Like, that is the roadmap for mobile going forward, so that’s not a guess, that’s actually when everyone expects that will occur based on what the technology providers are working on. Someday, maybe, there could be people implanted with chips. Seriously. The technology already exists, there’s already people using them. It’s just not commercial or at scale in any meaningful sense. What it’s going to take is some brilliant group of innovators to figure out the reasons why people might benefit, to bring those benefits to life, and to convince people that those benefits actually are, in fact, benefits. I’m not predicting that will happen, though I do think it’s likely that at least some people will benefit longer term, and some people will adopt them in the longer term. I’m also reasonably confident that if these do hit the market at some scale, that what I just described is a fairly well known playbook that will create that reality. Now, note that I’m not 100 percent sure about that last one that I just told you about. I don’t know that that product will exist. There are very few things that I’m 100 percent sure about. I mentioned a moment ago that I’m an expert. As an expert, that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. Far from it. My job isn’t to have the answers. It’s to explore the questions and help my clients find answers they can live with. And that’s kind of my point here today. As part of what I do, I’m a perpetual student. I’m always looking to learn. I read and I listen to podcasts and I watch videos and presentations endlessly about these tools that companies use to connect with their customers and that customers use to connect with companies. Part of that learning is continually realizing that every innovation has its pros and cons. I’ve shared the Paul Verilio quote many times, that “when you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.” And I will be completely transparent about this. I tend to focus on the benefits that technology provides, because I tend to focus on the best in people. My sense is that at least in the context of business and marketing, there just aren’t that many mustache twirling villains seeking to use technology to make the world a worse place. I’m not saying they don’t exist. I’m saying in the context of business, there aren’t that many of them. I’m also, for purposes of our discussion today, going to ignore geopolitical rivals and outright criminals. Obviously, those folks exist, and they’re absolutely worth discussing. They’re not my core area of expertise, and I suspect not why you listen to this show. I also have a much more relevant point to what this show tends to be about. And that is, when tech goes wrong, It’s usually not because the tech malfunctioned. It’s usually not because somebody planned for it to be evil. Instead, it’s almost always sloppy design by innovators who didn’t think through the context and the consequences of their applications and their algorithms. Sometimes, it’s because users who push the tools in bad directions too, which again, could be a lack of forethought by the innovators and entrepreneurs and developers. You know, if you think about it, the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 didn’t need AI to think up their monstrous attack. And Google thought through a ton of truly awful use cases when it launched its Gemini generative AI to prevent it from doing harm. Those included things like pornography and other kinds of hateful material. Of course, they were so busy thinking about the worst things, that they missed lesser problems like misinformation that folks on the internet found and exploited within a couple of hours of Gemini’s release. So, it wasn’t the technology that failed. It was people who failed. You know, are there exceptions? Do big companies sometimes deliberately make truly terrible decisions? Sure, of course they do. Invariably, there’s some jackass at some company who ignores the likelihood or the impact of a given approach or simply doesn’t care if those occur. You can absolutely find examples, but the notable cases where that does occur tend to be notable because they are, in fact, relatively rare. It’s not somebody being malicious. It’s far more likely that some hoodie wearing product manager made a snap judgment without thinking through what could happen. That’s why when I’m asked if AI scares me, I don’t think it does. AI doesn’t scare me; people scare me. And not because I think people are terrible, but because they can’t see past their inherent incentives and biases and blind spots. Plus, of course, the actions of the occasional jerk. I mean, sure, I live in the real world, those folks do exist. But they’re not the majority. Now you could argue when some of these failures, when some of these failures occur, it’s not especially important why it occurred if people suffer from it. You may have seen the recent story about a 14 year old boy in Florida who died by suicide allegedly with the encouragement of an AI chatbot. Clearly that is a tragic story and it’s entirely fair that if the chatbot has contributed to this boy’s death, it doesn’t matter whether the chatbot developer cut corners or simply overlooked a potential defect. They should still be held accountable if their actions or inactions caused someone to die. But why those actions or inactions occurred matter, and I’m going to come back to why in a moment. You also have to remember that stories like these aren’t limited to AI. We’ve all heard stories about social media bullying leading to awful outcomes, especially for girls. We know that search can surface misinformation, and so on. There’s plenty of these. It’s not hard to find them. What I would also say is true is that tech, in and of itself, isn’t the bad guy. It’s people who create the tech, and market the tech, and use the tech, who keep me up at night. You have to remember that technology is easy, really. People are complicated. You know, when the first commercial chip implants arrive, you’re not going to see me jumping in line to get one. It won’t be because I don’t trust the technology. Instead, it’s the innovators and other users who really scare me. And it doesn’t matter whether those tools are built with malicious features or simply due to the lack of forethought. We’re going to hear terrible stories of these tools go wrong, just as we do with AI and social and the internet itself. Now, long time listeners of the show know that I like to keep things positive, I like to focus on the good aspects here. Not because I’m naive, but because there’s already enough negativity out there without me adding to it, which is why my point today is not to tell you technology is bad and you shouldn’t use it. Far from it. Technology is in the world and it’s not going anywhere. It is a core component of the world we live in and we receive dramatic benefits again and again and again. And I would argue that we should look for the benefits of the ship while looking for ways to mitigate the shipwrecks, you know? We’ve also seen what happens when people move to a remote cabin in the woods and hand type lengthy manifestos about the dangers of technology, right? That’s not really the path we should be heading down. Instead, you have to stay informed. You have to keep learning. You have to be a perpetual student, just like I am. Not just of tech, but of people. Don’t just look for the examples of things that went wrong and say see, this technology is a bad thing. Instead, try to understand why it went wrong. What happened? What decisions were made? And how could whatever happened have been done differently? This chatbot story I mentioned a moment ago, regarding the boy in Florida. It does matter what they did and why they did it, to understand how to not do it again. It doesn’t mean that that should limit their accountability if in fact they are responsible for this. It means we need to understand what decisions were made that led to this so that we can not do that in the future. So that others can learn from it and not do that in the future. Was this an engineering error or did someone overlook a problem that’s going to be obvious in hindsight? Those are questions we need to know. You also need to be a smart consumer. Understand the ways that the tools you use can be used for you and used against you. And most importantly, as a marketing and business professional, make sure you are thinking about ways your choices can hurt customers and then do everything you can do to limit those harms. Including occasionally, if necessary, cancelling your program. Don’t do the thing you thought you were going to do. There are some ways you can actually prevent yourself from making these errors. There’s a couple of techniques that I really like. One is making sure you have a devil’s advocate in your discussions. If you’re not familiar with this, a devil’s advocate is someone whose job it is to argue against whatever you’re planning to do. It could be your lawyer, or it could be an operations person, or it could be an IT person. But their incentive needs to be to stop whatever you’re working on from moving forward. Their bonus can’t be based on releasing the product, or releasing the service, or releasing the campaign. Their bonus has to be based on, did we eliminate risks? Listen to the concerns of those people, and then come up with plans to address those risks before they ever surface in the real world. Another way you can do this is you can conduct a pre mortem or a risk assessment. If you’re not familiar with a pre mortem, it’s an exercise where you visualize the aftermath of your product or your service or your campaign’s launch before you actually launch. You take a moment and look back and ask, what went well? What went badly? What caused us to succeed? What caused us to fail? What did we do that helped our customers? And what did we do that hurt our customers? Take the time with your team to think through all of those questions. And I’ll link to some others in the show notes. Then create mitigation plans for the things that, you know, hurt your customers and caused you to fail. How do you take those out of the loop to make sure they’re not a problem? A risk assessment is a similar concept. You assess how likely it is that something bad happens. You assess how much impact it will have if those things occur. And again, you take steps to mitigate the things that are the most likely and have the biggest impacts before they ever occur. When we look at the things that have happened in the world, the really terrible ones that have occurred over time, usually it’s because nobody took the time to ask these questions. They didn’t think through, what do we do? How does the system respond? How does the tool respond? How does the technology respond? How do we as a company take action before they happen so that they don’t actually cause real problems? Finally, I realize this episode might seem like kind of a bummer. It might seem like kind of a drag. It is easy when you think about these things to get overwhelmed. It is easy to find yourself going, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible and nobody should use these tools.” When that occurs, it is absolutely okay to, as folk say, touch grass, right? Take a walk outside. Stick your phone in a drawer and go to the beach for a day. You know, it’s not just okay, it’s downright good for you to step away for a minute or two. Go for a hike in the woods. Just maybe don’t build a cabin and retreat there, right? AI and digital are not evil. They’re not. And most of the time, neither are the people who create them. They absolutely can cause evil, whether intentionally or through lack of forethought. What’s also true is they’re not going anywhere. They’re in our lives and generally drive positive outcomes. So if we know that they’re going to be in our lives, and we know that they have the potential for evil, our job is to keep learning about what these tools are, what their strengths and limitations are, how they can provide benefits and risks to ourselves and to our customers, and then take the actions necessary to eliminate the risks and to mitigate the harms. Our job is to ensure that they actually deliver the benefit that they’re supposed to. So no, I don’t believe that AI or digital are evil. What I do think is true, though, is it’s our job every day to ensure that stays true. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode. As well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 437. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . You can find me on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it this week by using the Twitter handle @tcpeter. And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep hitting me up on Twitter, sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and especially given what we talked about today, take care, everybody. The post Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Some folks think that artificial intelligence is a white knight, coming to rescue their businesses from gatekeepers such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and the rest. But is that true? Is AI the key to unlocking Big Tech’s gates? Or is it just another gatekeeper waiting in the wings? In this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, our company founder and president, Tim Peter, takes a look at whether artificial intelligence might play in helping you bypass gatekeepers, and how you can start connecting directly with your customers no matter what. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 437) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links OpenAI – Wikipedia Anthropic – Wikipedia Perplexity AI – Wikipedia When you give a Claude a mouse Google and Kairos sign nuclear reactor deal with aim to power AI – Ars Technica Microsoft deal propels Three Mile Island restart, with key permits still needed | Reuters The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI PDF link The Value of AI in Today’s Classrooms Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) The Best AI is Now Free For Everyone: Revisiting Will Your Customers Use AI? (Thinks Out Loud) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) Why AI Makes Customer Experience Even More Important for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 427) Revisiting Bundling, Unbundling, and Customer Acquisition (Thinks Out Loud) What Marketers Really Need to Know About Putting AI to Work (Thinks Out Loud Episode 426) AI is the Bear: Learning to Be a Better Marketer in the Age of AI (Thinks Out Loud Episode 422) An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here: Free Downloads We have some free downloads for you to help you navigate the current situation, which you can find right here: A Modern Content Marketing Checklist. Want to ensure that each piece of content works for your business? Download our latest checklist to help put your content marketing to work for you. Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix. As a bonus, here’s a PDF that can help you assess your company’s digital maturity. You can use this to better understand where your company excels and where its opportunities lie. And, of course, we’re here to help if you need it . The Digital & E-commerce Maturity Matrix rates your company’s effectiveness — Ad Hoc, Aware, Striving, Driving — in 6 key areas in digital today, including: Customer Focus Strategy Technology Operations Culture Data Best of Thinks Out Loud You can find our “Best of Thinks Out Loud” playlist on Spotify right here: Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Subscribe in iTunes Subscribe in the Google Play Store Contact information for the podcast: podcast@timpeter.com Past Insights from Tim Peter Thinks Technical Details for Thinks Out Loud Recorded using a Shure SM7B Vocal Dynamic Microphone and a Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 (3rd Gen) USB Audio Interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 22m 22s You can subscribe to Thinks Out Loud in iTunes , the Google Play Store , via our dedicated podcast RSS feed (or sign up for our free newsletter ). You can also download/listen to the podcast here on Thinks using the player at the top of this page. Transcript: Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? Well hello again everyone and welcome back to Thinks Out Loud , your source for all the digital expertise your business needs. My name is Tim Peter, this is episode 437 of the Big Show and I think we have a really cool show for you today. We know that gatekeepers gonna gate. You’ve heard me say this many, many times on this show. I’ve also heard a number of people proposing that artificial intelligence might bypass the gatekeepers. It might be the way that we finally get to take gatekeepers and shove them completely out of the way. You know, connect directly with our customers in every single situation. For instance, the hospitality industry is continually looking for something that will bypass gatekeepers like Expedia or Booking.com or Google. By far, the most likely use case where that could occur in the next bunch of years is the emergence of AI agents. And I’d like to dive into that use case for a moment so you have a sense of what we’re talking about. Because this could apply beyond just travel, beyond just hospitality. This could be something you see in retail, this could be something you see in a B2B context. There’s all kinds of places where, in theory, this could take the place. This could let you connect directly with your customers. And the premise here is that customers would have one or more agents that would search for, in this case, travel on their behalf. For instance, I’m taking a trip to New York City in a few weeks for work. I need a hotel near the offices of the company I’m visiting. I’m also having dinner with colleagues while I’m there, so I’ll need flights and ground transportation that get me to my hotel and then back to the airport in time for the meetings that I have and in time to make my flight. I need all of the options that I choose to comply with my client’s travel policies. I need flights and hotel stays that also get me the most points in my preferred loyalty programs; if I’m traveling, I want to accrue my benefits. And of course, I want to optimize my time during the trip so I’m not out of the office or away from my family any longer than is necessary. That is a case that I would love to outsource to an agent. Seriously. I would absolutely love to have this in my pocket or on my desktop right now. I’d love to be able to type a prompt that says, “Hey, agent, go do this. You know my preferences. You know what I need. Here’s where I’m going. Here is roughly when I need to go. Make that happen and report back to me with a couple of options I can simply say yes to or try again.” I mean, wouldn’t that be cool? And there are some interesting beta projects that I’ve seen. But an actual agent that I could give a simple prompt to and that understands my preferences does not exist today. Period. We’re probably a couple of years away from that existing in real world terms. Probably. Maybe by the end of next year. Maybe by the end of 2026. But today, it doesn’t exist. And keep that in mind. Another great agent use case that I’d love to see, this is my own personal one. I’d love a robust, cross device, cross platform search engine. If you’re like me, you have conversations with customers, and with family, and with friends, across an array of devices and apps. You’ve got email. You’ve got social media, both public and DMs. You’ve got text and WhatsApp. You’ve got MS Teams and or Slack. You’ve got articles and newsletters you’ve read on Substack or LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram, and a wide array of websites. And you probably find yourself asking from time to time, “Where did I read that? Was that in an email? Was it a text? Was it an article?” I know I do. Wouldn’t you love to have a way to search across all of those sources? Not for possible answers, not just a regular Google search, but for the actual thing you read or sent. Maybe make it time bound, like only things you’ve interacted with in the last couple of weeks. Based on conversations I’ve had with others, I don’t think I’m alone on wanting something like this. And despite some good work in this area, the solution I’m proposing does not exist today. One of the reasons is there’s nothing that connects all of the various data sources of the two use cases that I’ve just given you. The one thing that might is something like the operating system either on your laptop or on your phone, and we’ll come back to that in a second. The last use case where AI could have a major impact on the way people interact with brands and businesses in the future — or at least one last use case I’m going to explore today — is extended reality. So that would include things like virtual reality and augmented reality. Some folks refer to this as the final computing platform. This is what everything will be like at some point in the future. Think things like smart glasses or other wearables. That provide data about the real world as you interact with it in real time, creating content and immersive experiences on the fly, virtual reality games and education that continually update using generative AI to deepen the experience. There is no question in my mind that generative AI undoubtedly will provide huge benefits in these areas. They can pull content from a wide array of sources. They can generate content on the fly and narrate it or provide visual cues as needed. Today, these types of experiences are definitely limited by things like robust connectivity, which is getting better all the time, the weight of the device, And very much related to that, battery life. We are probably — I’m going to make a guess here; I’m clearly not the expert here, but I’m basing this on what other folks have said — we’re probably 6 to 10 plus years away. We’re talking the 2030s in all likelihood before this becomes a reality. Which is not that far from now. I go back to the Bill Gates quote that I’ve used many, many times that we always overestimate the change we will see in the next two years and underestimate the change we will see in the next 10. So what things might look like in the middle of the 2030s, which shocker, is only 10 years away, could be a dramatic difference from where we are today. Think about where we are relative to 10 years ago. In 2014, in late 2014, if I was talking to you about artificial intelligence and how people would be using it in their day to day lives, the fact that 1 in 9 people use it every single day and 24 percent of workers are using it at least once a week. That was unthinkable 10 years ago, now we talk about it very much like a commonplace thing. So, we’re going to have technology challenges to overcome. We, I mean, we as a society are going to have technology challenges to overcome. Battery life and weight plus the ability to stream heavy visual content quickly are likely the big barriers that have to fall. We also know it’s true that 6G mobile connections will start rolling out commercially in 2030, which could fix at least the streaming question. If battery life and battery weight and device weight fall pretty quickly as they are doing, you know, what we’re likely to see in 2034 seems plausible. And much like I talked about with agents, I’ve seen early stage companies working towards all of these. I want to be clear, I absolutely welcome their potential success. I’m confident that somebody will eventually succeed at all of these. I also think it’s true that these tools simply don’t exist in any real form in the real world today. It doesn’t mean they won’t. But the thing where I think we need to be really conscious is that none of these tools seem likely to come from some unknown startup. Some of the pieces, sure, but probably not the overall experience. And there’s a major reason why this is likely to be so, in my view. The simple fact is that, at least right now, artificial intelligence favors gatekeepers. AI is expensive as hell. You need lots of money to make these models work. You need lots of data, which is expensive as hell. You have to have significant computing power, which, say it with me, is expensive as hell. You require brilliant researchers who are expensive as hell. And you consume massive amounts of energy to make these things work, which, again, is expensive as hell. Google and Microsoft literally are signing contracts for their own nuclear power plants to meet their energy needs. That’s not a joke. That’s a true story. These things require a ton of expensive resources in terms of money, in terms of data, in terms of compute, in terms of researchers, and in terms of actual power. That’s crazy. So it’s not super likely you’re going to see small companies come out of nowhere with these things. Probably. If you think about who the huge big, uh, if you think about who the big AI players are, well, we’ve got Google. Obviously, they’re a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Microsoft. Again, a big time gatekeeper. We’ve got Amazon. Ditto. Facebook. Ditto, ditto. We’ve got OpenAI. Who is the parent of ChatGPT? Well, they’re a disruptive startup, for sure, originally set up as a non profit, with massive funding from, uh, Microsoft, who’s a big time gatekeeper. Okay, so what about Anthropic, the makers of Claude? They’re another disruptive startup, featuring a bunch of ChatGPT alumni, and they got massive funding from, oh wait, Amazon and Google. Huh. You’ve got Perplexity. Perplexity is another disruptive service, and it features founders from Meta and OpenAI, and they’ve had significant investments from, among others, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean. Huh. That’s kind of interesting, right? And if VR, AR, and extended reality, XR, come along at scale in the next 5 to 10 years, well, who do you think is going to provide that? I mean, let’s see, the current VR devices come from Facebook and Apple. Augmented reality on mobile phones mostly comes from Apple, Google, and Samsung, the last of which runs on Google’s Android OS. Smartwatches, which are another potential AR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google and Samsung. Again, more or less running Google software. And the most popular smart hearing devices, another potential AR or XR delivery mechanism, come from Apple and Google. Are you beginning to notice a pattern here? The reality is, big tech is working to remain a gatekeeper. They’re trying to close off all the avenues by which someone else could come in and shove them out of the way. Even the startups are deeply connected to big tech players. In addition to their own efforts, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have invested in organizations like Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity that are most likely to shove them out of their membership in Big Tech. Almost all of these folks, plus the other players in AI, are also using either Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to run their servers. Again, Big Tech still collects a toll in those cases. And remember how expensive it is to run a real, robust, and relevant artificial intelligence. Even if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, they’re still going to need to fund their ongoing operations. I also don’t think Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and their other investors Put all this money into these startups without expecting a return on that investment. They’re going to want some payback here. In other words, if OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic wins, do you think it’s likely you’re going to be any better off than you are today? In short, there isn’t a white knight coming to rescue you from big tech with artificial intelligence. AI isn’t a key to unlock the gatekeeper’s gates. It’s just another way gatekeeper’s gonna gate, even if it turns out to be a different gatekeeper. It’s unrealistic to expect some new technology to suddenly disrupt and completely bypass Big Tech. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Big Tech has a lot at stake. They’re gatekeepers. They’re not going away without a fight. If you want to bypass Big Tech, you’re going to have to take a lesson from Jose Serrano, a character in the classic baseball comedy Major League . And to paraphrase his famous line, “do it yourself.” It’s up to you to create a direct relationship with your customers. It’s up to you to create memorable experiences that will bring your customers back to you again and again and again. It’s up to you to create a brand that customers will seek out by name. Think about it. I regularly quote Jeff Bezos famous question, “What won’t change as we go forward?” Even if the platforms and technologies and tools that your customers use change, They’re still going to seek out businesses and brands that they trust… or not. You’re still going to need to separate yourself from your competition… or not. You’re still going to need to find a way to get customers to connect with you directly… or not. You get the picture. AI isn’t a key. It’s another lock if you’re not continually looking to build direct relationships with your customers. You’re helping the gatekeepers keep their gates in place. You’re helping them build those locks. Your job is to get customers to connect with you directly. That’s the key to unlocking gatekeepers’ gates. I’m going to link to a couple of episodes in the show notes where we talked about how you can do that. And yes, you can and should use AI to help you do that more efficiently and more effectively. I’m going to link in the show notes to a few episodes on how you can do that too. The last thing that I would encourage you to do is to keep listening for more ways you can build those connections with customers. Because the other big key to bypassing big tech is to keep learning. I’m confident you can do it. I’m confident you can bypass Big Tech. And I’m looking forward to seeing how well you do it. The thing you have to remind yourself is AI is just one more place the gatekeepers gonna gate. If you want to unlock those gates. You’re going to have to do it by connecting with customers directly. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. And I want to remind you again that you can find the show notes for this episode. As well as an archive of all past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Just look for episode 437. Subscribe to Thinks Out Loud Don’t forget that you can click on the subscribe link in any of the episodes that you find there to have Thinks Out Loud delivered to your favorite podcatcher every single week. You can also find Thinks Out Loud on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, anywhere fine podcasts are found. Leave a Rating or Review for Thinks Out Loud I would also very much appreciate it if you could provide a positive rating or review for the show whenever you use one of those services. If you like what you hear on Thinks Out Loud , if you enjoy what we talk about, if you like being part of the community that we’re building here, please give us a positive rating or review. Reviews help other listeners find the podcast. Reviews help other listeners understand what Thinks Out Loud is all about. They help to build our community and they mean the world to me. So thank you so much for doing that. I very, very much appreciate it. Thinks Out Loud on Social Media You can also find Thinks Out Loud on LinkedIn by going to linkedin.com/tim-peter-and-associates-llc . You can find me on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it this week by using the Twitter handle @tcpeter. And of course, you can email me by sending an email to podcast(at) timpeter.com . Again, that’s podcast(at) timpeter.com . Show Outro Finally, and I know I say this a lot, I want you to know how thrilled I am that you keep listening to what we do here. It means so much to me. You are the reason we do this show. You’re the reason that Thinks Out Loud happens every single week. So please, keep your messages coming on LinkedIn. Keep hitting me up on Twitter, sending things via email. I love getting a chance to talk with you, to hear what’s going on in your world, and to learn how we can do a better job building on the types of information and insights and content and community that work for you and work for your business. So with all that said, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead, and I will look forward to speaking with you here on Thinks Out Loud next time. Until then, please be well, be safe, and as always, take care, everybody. The post Is AI a Gatekeeper? Or is it a Key? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 437) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) 22:22
AI might kill your brand — but probably not. It’s far more likely that AI will kill Big Tech’s brands, and in particular, Google. The search giant faces more threats… The post Four Big Threats (Plus a Bonus Threat!) To Google’s Dominance Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 436) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Artificial intelligence will shape the way your customers interact with your brand. That’s undoubtedly true. In fact, it’s possible we’ll see cases where the customer might not interact directly with… The post Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Digital gatekeepers always work to get between you and your customers. That was true five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. And it’s still true today. They kill… The post Revisiting Why Digital Gatekeepers Kill Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) 27:08
Consumers are adopting AI at a remarkable pace, as fast as they adopted computers and the internet. And we’re only starting to see how that might shape our businesses in… The post An AI Day in the Life of a Marketing and Digital Strategy Consultant (Thinks Out Loud Episode 434) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) 22:43
A listener of this show told me recently that, “People are already overwhelmed with the amount of social media they manage.” That’s a real challenge, on that can make it… The post Revisiting How to Diversify Your Marketing Mix When There’s Too Much to Do (Thinks Out Loud) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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