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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.
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Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438)
Manage episode 447822054 series 1207373
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.
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.…
The post Are AI and Digital Evil (Thinks Out Loud Episode 438) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates.
159 епізодів
ПоширитиManage episode 447822054 series 1207373
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.
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.…
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
Google’s AI Mode in search, to put it bluntly, sucks. At least it does if your job is to drive traffic and revenue for your business. We all know that “gatekeepers gonna gate.” Well, AI Mode is a sure sing that Google is closing the gate on marketers. They’re removing access to the kinds of traffic we’ve taken for granted for years. Will AI Mode kill your company’s traffic? Not exactly. It’s slightly more complicated than that. It does suck, mind you. But it’s not as simple as “AI Mode won’t link to you.” What is the truth of AI Mode for your brand and your business? What do you need to do to ensure that AI Mode doesn’t kill your brand and business? That’s what this episode of the podcast is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Google Closes the Gate on Marketers (Thinks Out Loud) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Lily Ray talked about How Google AI Mode Keeps Users in AI Mode | LinkedIn Michael Goldrich: Google Just Killed the Blue Links. What Hotel Teams Must Do to Stay Visible and Booked My LinkedIn post about Google slamming the gate shut in AI Mode for many businesses YouTube interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome Lily Grozeva’s post on LinkedIn that says “Most marketers still think AI Search is about content. It’s not. It’s about signals, and most of them live off your website.” What Connects TikTok and the Hub and Spoke Model of Digital? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 299) Digital Gatekeepers and the Death of Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud Episode 247) Whose brand does Google want to build? – Biznology Is Content Still King or Have the Gatekeepers Won? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 328) You Don’t Need a Website Revisiting How to Escape Big Tech’s Web (Thinks Out Loud) The CORE Methodology: How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 2 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 425) Google is Changing Search. How to Build Traffic and Revenue Beyond Google — Part 1 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 424) Buy the Book — Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech . You can learn more about it here on the site . Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today . Past Appearances 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 Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Mic and a IK Multimedia iRig Pro Duo IO USB audio interface into Logic Pro X for the Mac. Running time: 15m 00s 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: Google Closes the Gate on Marketers Welcome to the show. I’m Tim Peter. Google introduced a bunch of new features at its recent I/O event. And the one I want to talk about the most is AI Mode in search. You’ve probably been reading a lot about it. You’ve probably heard a lot about it. And the reason is because this is likely to be a huge deal from the perspective of your customers’ behaviors. end from the perspective of your business results. We all know that gatekeepers gonna gate. You’ve heard me say that a lot. AI Mode sure makes it seem as though Google is closing the gate on marketers, making it less likely that customers will click on links or visit your website after interacting with Google’s platform. Why? Well, for starters, there aren’t many links in it. It’s tough to click on a thing that isn’t there. For another… they mostly link to companies Google business profile page. That’s not great. There is one huge exception coming though that we’ll talk about in a bit. So what’s really going on here? Is Google closing the gate on marketers? And if they are, what can you do about it? This is episode 463 of The Big Show. Let’s dive in. So today we’re gonna talk about AI Mode in the search. And Sundar Pichai was talking about this at I/O and he was talking about AI overviews. He said, since launching at IO last year, AI overviews have scaled up. These are quotes to over 1.5 billion users every month in more than 200 countries and territories. He said that as people use AI overviews, we see they are happier with their results and they search more often. He said in our biggest markets like the US and India. AI overviews are driving over 10% growth in the types of queries that show them. And he followed that up by saying, what’s particularly exciting is that this growth increases over time. He also said that AI overviews are one of the strongest drivers of growth for visual searches in Google Lens. He also said that AI overviews are one of the strongest drivers of growth for visual searches in Google Lens and that Lens grew 65% year over year with more than 100 billion already this year. He didn’t say whether those were 100 billion users or 100 billion searches. Regardless, one consequence that we’re seeing at the moment is that Google is keeping most of the traffic from those searches to itself. There’s been lots of people talking about this. Lily Ray over on LinkedIn talked about how Google AI Mode keeps users in AI Mode. My friend Michael Goldrich said Google just killed the blue links. What hotels must do to stay visible and booked? I talked about the same thing where I’m over on LinkedIn talking about how Google is slamming the gate shut in AI Mode for many businesses. But that’s not what Google’s saying. In a recent interview with Nilay Patel, the link will be in the show notes, Sundar Pichai said that this is a quote, Google is committed to continuing to send traffic to other websites and that users expect that from Google. He also says that this is a quote, In five years, we will still send traffic to websites. Some folks seem to think Sundar Pichai is lying. Right? They’re like, I don’t think so, buddy. For instance, Lily Ray, this is a quote from her LinkedIn post. said, in my opinion, Sundar didn’t have great answers to Neelay’s questions about why AI overviews haven’t driven more traffic a year after launch. He, and the seemingly every Google spokesperson, claims that it traffic. to a broader set of websites. At least all the evidence that most folks are seeing right now suggests that’s not the case. Weirdly, I don’t think he’s lying. I think we need to remember how Google makes money. Google makes most of its money from ads, the overwhelming majority of its money from ads. Of course they’re going to send the traffic to websites. The difference is that this traffic is going to be paid traffic, not organic and far from free. We’ve seen this playbook from Google in the past. Think about how much they’ve increased ad loads and search results over the last bunch of years, over the last decade. For those in the hotel industry, Google introduced meta-search listings, that is ads by another name, paid meta-search listings, that showed prices from OTAs, online travel agencies, like Expedia and Booking.com . If you were a hotel, you absolutely could have your hotel website appear there too, as long as you paid Google. Google replaced organic traffic with paid traffic. And ironically, most hotel owners and marketers thought that was a victory. They thought they’d won because suddenly we can compete against the expedience and booking dot coms of the world. Just imagine how giddy we’ll all be when Google allows you to buy ads alongside AI Mode answers. We’ll be thrilled, right? And we’ll reward them. We’ll buy those ads. We will reward them for putting another gate between us and our customers. It’s what we’ve done every other time. By the way, just as a quick aside, their ability to monetize these tools is going to slow down the rollout. It is probably the thing most likely to hurt their ability to beat chat GPT or perplexity or any other competitor. I don’t think that’s gonna happen, but that’s the thing most likely to make them stumble because they can’t get rid of the goose that lays the golden egg without replacing it with another goose. Anyway, I don’t wanna go down that rabbit hole this episode. rabbits, goose, geese, pardon all the farm animals today. I promise I’ll come back to it another time. Back to the point at hand. Lily Grozeva has a great post on LinkedIn that says most marketers still think AI search is about content. It’s not. It’s about signals and most of them live off your website. What Lily is talking about and what she’s saying here is that she says this a quote, if you’re not referenced somewhere else, you’re not understood by the AI, you’re invisible. And she advises people to, and again, I’m giving her a quote here, make a map of influence. Use tools like Perplexity or Peak AI or Spark Turo to understand where your audience hangs out and how the LLMs use this information to train themselves. She then continues saying, then build your presence there in podcasts, LinkedIn, Reddit threads, guest quotes, third party coverage. And concludes, she concludes, you’re not trying to rank, you’re trying to be recognized. I love that phrase. You’re not trying to rank, you’re trying to be recognized. We need to keep this in mind. I agree with Lily’s point of view almost 100%. The key word there is almost. Nothing that Lily uncovered in her research is wrong, so far as I can tell. I absolutely agree that you have to make sure your web presence includes places where your customers hang out. These are the spokes of your hub and spoke strategy. If you’ve listened to the show before, you’ve heard me talk about spokes. You’ve heard me talk about the hub and spokes. I’ve got links in the show notes about how you can put these to work. Or if you want, you can see chapter five of my book available on amazon.com and also linked to in the show notes. The fact remains, you need to build direct relationships with your customers. You need to provide the kinds of human centered, helpful content. that answers customers’ questions. And you need that content to exist where your customers are. That includes spokes like LinkedIn or Instagram or Reddit threads or what have you. You also can’t rely solely, and solely is the important word here, of third-party sites, or else you’re letting other folks control your access to customers. By the way, this isn’t just Google’s strategy, right? We know that gatekeeper is going to gate. Many of the links in today’s show notes are from brilliant people who I admire and they’re posting their content on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn itself is part of the problem. You can’t see this content without a LinkedIn account. And most folks are duplicating their content and comments on their own sites. I know I’m not most of the time. Instead, we are putting ourselves behind their gates and thanking them for the privilege of being seen. What blows my mind is when you link to a post on LinkedIn, if you just copy and paste, the title of the link is Post Feed LinkedIn. Not who posted it, not what it’s about, just an anonymous, amorphous LinkedIn post in a generic LinkedIn feed on LinkedIn. Remind me again whose brand you’re building here. Again, it’s our job. to be seen. It doesn’t matter if it’s Google doing this or LinkedIn doing this or Instagram doing this or TikTok doing this. Your content plays a key role. It has to be seen. But it has to belong to you. So not just the spoke and to be fair, not just the hub. This is hub and spoke. You need to make sure you’re using both or else it doesn’t matter where you show up, you’re still not going to get traffic, you’re still not going get the kind of brand awareness you need, and you’re certainly not going to do it for free. Once you get people to engage with you, you need to create deep, meaningful experiences that encourage your customers to search for you and recommend you by name to their friends and family and fans and followers. And as you build these relationships, you need to convince your customers that you’re worthy and trustworthy to share their data with you. so you can keep the conversation going. Otherwise, you’re going to be stuck behind Google’s gate praying for them to introduce more ads so that you can pay to be seen. Or LinkedIn’s gates, or Instagram’s gates, or TikTok’s gates. Google and the rest are trying to close the gate on marketers. Your job is to make sure your customers are willing and want to jump over those gates to reach you. And I can’t wait to see you do it. Now looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode and let them know what you think too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 463, and an archive of all our past episodes by going to timpeter.com slash podcast. Again, that’s TimPeter.com slash podcast. And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you’re looking for something new to read, by the way, I’d love to suggest the number one new e-commerce book on Amazon.com called Digital Reset, Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech and written by me. Pick up a copy and let me know what you think. I would genuinely appreciate it. With all that said, thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. I’ll be back next week with a new episode, and until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. Take care now. The post Google Closes the Gate on Marketers (Thinks Out Loud) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the US. And Tim’s got some quick thoughts for you to enjoy before you take off for the weekend. Be sure to give a listen and let us know what you think. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Touch Grass — Memorial Day 2025 (Thinks Out Loud 462) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links "Touch Grass" (Thinks Out Loud Episode 358) The Only Way to Succeed Next Year (Thinks Out Loud Episode 444) AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) 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) Gratitude 2023 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 403) Buy the Book — Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech Tim Peter has written a new book called Digital Reset: Driving Marketing Beyond Big Tech . You can learn more about it here on the site . Or buy your copy on Amazon.com today . Past Appearances 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: 6m 11s 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: Touch Grass — Memorial Day 2025 Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. I’ve got a super short episode for you today. We’re about to head into the Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. And as you undoubtedly know, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of the summer. know, many of my clients in hospitality, for instance, have been working like crazy the last few weeks to be ready for this weekend, and for everything that follows. This is when business happens for them. For almost everyone else who listens to the show, you’ve got a three day weekend to chill and relax and kind of take time to reassess where you are. And if I’m being honest, that’s a big part of my plan for the weekend too. It’s going to be a little bit more chill than normal. I mean, I’m going to do a little bit of work because of course I’m going to do a little bit of work. But I plan to do a bunch of relaxing and spend most of my time offline. Most of my time not looking at this thing. You know, the other day someone on Bluesky, who I would credit if I could find who said it, said that touch grass has simultaneously become an insult that people throw around, and also incredibly useful life advice, right? There’s a lot going on at the moment for all of us. And maybe touching grass is an okay thing to do. But if we think about it, you know, we’re about to enter summer. Obviously for some businesses that’s a very busy time. The economy is getting a little weird and we’re not 100% sure how things are going to shake out. I’m very sure that you’re working on a ton of projects. I know that I’ve been focused on unbelievable amounts of client work. We’ve been super busy and having a great year so far, alongside the launch of my new book, Digital Reset, Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech . And it is okay to take a break every now and again. Seriously. It is okay. You know the saying, you’ve heard the saying a million times, that “life is a marathon, not a sprint.” Yes, success in marketing and customer acquisition and business more generally takes work. But if you go all out all the time, you’re simply going to end up burnt out and less effective overall. There is a limit to what we can do and it’s okay to accept those limits from time to time and take a little rest, take a little break. So I plan to touch grass this weekend. And I’d recommend the same for anyone who’s listening to this. You know, touch grass, touch sand, touch water, touch hands with the people who matter to you. Talk to someone about something other than your work. Read a book. Maybe even mine. Play a game. Sing a song. Tell a joke. Most importantly, embrace joy. Your work will be waiting for you again in a couple of days. It’s okay to take a moment to rest and relax and make sure you’re in a position to do your best work when you come back. We’ll be back too. We’ll have a whole new show for you next week where we dig into meatier topics. But in the meantime, I hope you do something fun this weekend. I hope you get out of your head for a bit. I hope you get an opportunity to spend time with people who you love, people who you care about, and people who make your world a better place. Because if you can do that, you’ll be in a much better place to be successful all the days that follow. We’ll talk to you soon, okay? Show Wrap-Up and Credits I want to remind you that you can find the show notes for this episode, which is going to have a handful of links, but it’s not going to be as heavy as they normally are. But this episode, episode 462, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . Of course, I’m going to ask you to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. That goes without saying. And if you are looking for something to read this weekend, I’d love to suggest the number one new e-commerce book on Amazon.com called Digital Reset, Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech and written by me. Pick up a copy and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear about it. I genuinely appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. This show simply wouldn’t happen without you. I’ll be back with a new episode next week and until then, please be well, be safe, and more than ever, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post Touch Grass — Memorial Day 2025 (Thinks Out Loud 462) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
This is a slightly different episode than usual, and, to be honest, slightly more self-promotional than usual, too. You see, I am very excited to share the news that my new book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech is now available. This has been a labor of love over the last few years, informed by my experiences working with clients to drive direct revenues and lower the cost of customer acquisition. In this episode episode of the podcast, I focused on some of the lessons you can learn from the book, as well as why it matters for your business. I hope you take a moment to check it out. I’m thrilled to be able to share the book with you. And thanks for your continued support. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Digital Reset is Here (Thinks Out Loud 461) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Digital Reset: Marketing Beyond Big Tech Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech by Tim Peter — Paperback Amazon.com: Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech eBook by Tim Peter — Kindle Store Is It Impossible for Marketers to Keep Up With AI? (Thinks Out Loud 459) Digital Gatekeepers and the Death of Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud Episode 247) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458) Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen (Thinks Out Loud Episode 188) Is "Content is King" Dead? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 306) – Tim Peter & Associates Is Content a Strategic Product for Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 319) Is Content Still King or Have the Gatekeepers Won? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 328) 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: 10m 11s 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: Digital Reset is Here I’m Tim Peter. Welcome to the show. This is going to be a slightly more self-promotional episode than I usually do. I hope you’ll stick around though. I think it’s worth your while and worth your time. I’ve been talking about my upcoming book for the last couple of months and I am beyond thrilled to tell you that it’s now available. Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech , has been a labor of love of mine for years. It’s built from real world experiences with clients all around the world over the last 14 years of consulting and the last 20 plus years of my career. I’d like to take a minute to tell you a little bit about the book and why it matters for your business right now. This is episode 461 of The Big Show. Let’s dive in. Since starting my business 14 years ago, I’ve been focused on driving down the cost of customer acquisition for my clients. My initial clients were all in the hotel space, though we’ve branched out over the years into other travel businesses, financial services, software as a service and other tech firms, along with some manufacturers and the like who wanted to learn what we’d done for other people. What initially surprised me as I worked with these varying types of businesses was that the same challenges came up again and again. Big Tech companies like Google and Meta and Amazon and Microsoft continually put themselves between you and your customers. They put up gates and then charge you tolls to reach your customers. Almost regardless of industry, almost regardless of your product or your service or what it is you offer the world. That’s why I use the phrase “gatekeepers gonna gate” so often. It’s what they do. It’s just built into their nature. Sure, some of the specifics change from time to time, but the overall picture is fairly constant. One of the reasons is embedded in the very nature of the internet itself. It just kind of works this way. You see, your customers don’t want to go from place to place to place, constantly hunting for the information or people or products or services that they need. They just want to go to “the one” that has all the answers” — and certainly no more than a couple of places. You know, they might pick two, they might pick three, but they’re not going to pick ten. The companies that collect the things your customers want to find, the things that matter to your customers, they get more traffic, they get more data, and ultimately, they get more power. That’s how we end up with: Google dominating search Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn dominating social connections Amazon dominating e-commerce Apple and Google dominating mobile apps and as a result, mobile operating systems YouTube and TikTok dominating video Chat GPT in Google dominating artificial intelligence (at least today). That power, that control, that being the place your customers go to gives them the ability to put gates between you and your customers and then charge you increasing tolls to talk with them. That’s what they’re going to do every single time. And that’s why it’s time for your digital reset. That’s why it’s time for this book. The book isn’t just about the problem though. That would be, well, a really stupid book, right? “Everything sucks. Good luck with that.” I would not do that and I certainly wouldn’t encourage you to read a book that did. Instead, I also tried to put together a playbook for how you can bypass Big Tech, how you can learn the lessons others have learned to connect directly with your customers, to build a sustainable brand, and critically, to develop a sustainable competitive advantage for your business. I’d like to share just a couple of points about how you do that right now. It starts with having the right mindset. Your digital reset takes action, sure, undoubtedly, and the book absolutely offers a variety of actions you can explore. Again, I want this to be a useful book. What’s also true is that it starts first with believing that you can bypass Big Tech and that you can build direct connections with your customers. Actions that you don’t believe in will fail. I’ve seen this so many times over the years. You you try something, “it doesn’t work,” and I’m putting air quotes around that, and you walk away from it. You know, “Well,” you’ll hear, “we need to go back to the gatekeepers again because, you know, it didn’t work.” No, absolutely not. No way. I am telling you, I’ve seen this so many times that you can compete and win against the biggest, most dominating companies in history. You can bypass Big Tech. I’ve seen it. My clients and I have done it. Some of the lessons will be familiar to long time listeners of this podcast. You know, don’t be surprised when you read how “Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen, and Data is the Crown Jewels.” Those play a key role in your digital reset. Those play a key role in the digital reset. They’re critical. At the same time, those ideas are expanded and supported by a complete framework for building a modern brand using digital, a complete framework for driving down your cost of customer acquisition. More importantly, the book’s lessons apply even as new entrants show up like ChatGPT or Perplexity or TikTok. Even as those folks try to grab their seat at Big Tech’s table, we know this is going to happen. We know people will want to be the next king of the hill. And the book shows that while individual members might come and go, Big Tech is forever. We have to assume that will always be true. And because of that, the book shows what you can do to bypass Big Tech, no matter who’s part of that club. In short, Digital Reset is all about you and how you and your business can succeed today, tomorrow, and 10 years from now. I am so excited to share it with you. I’m so thrilled it’s out in the world. You you can find the book on Amazon or visit the link in the show notes to get there. I genuinely hope you’ll check it out. And I genuinely hope you’ll embrace its lessons because I want to see you succeed. And I know that you can. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Has somebody come to mind? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too. Let’s keep the learning going for everybody we know. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 460, as well as an archive of all of our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I would genuinely appreciate that. Thank you so much for listening today. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to tell you about something that I’m super proud of and that I hope you get to enjoy. I want to let you know of course this show wouldn’t happen without you so we will be back with a new episode next week. But until then, please, be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post Digital Reset is Here (Thinks Out Loud 461) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
According to Search Engine Journal, Apple might be thinking about replacing Google with ChatGPT or Perplexity as its default search engine in Safari. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. How in the world could Apple drop Google? Well, whether Apple dropping Google is likely or not isn’t the point. Instead, the point is that while any one member of Big Tech could (at least in theory) get pushed out of the club at any time, Big Tech itself will continue to roll right along. And that gatekeepers gonna gate, whether those gatekeepers are the companies we’ve competed with for years, or some new player in the game. As the saying goes, though, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Remember, your business probably depends on Google for a lot of your traffic and revenues. And Google clearly cares enough about the traffic Apple provides it that they’re willing to pay roughly $20 billion each year for the privilege of being the default search engine. If Google loses Apple’s traffic, what happens to yours? Again, the point isn’t whether this is likely. The point is that you’ve got to change the rules of the game. You’ve got to ensure you’re not dependent on any one Big Tech player for traffic and revenue Why does that matter for your business? And what can you do about it? That’s what this episode of the podcast is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Is Apple Dropping Google? What Does That Mean For Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud 460) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Destination Discourse Episode 26: What Happens to DMOs When Everything Changes? – YouTube Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458) Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen (Thinks Out Loud Episode 188) – Tim Peter & Associates More Studies Show AI Overviews Hurt Google Click Through Rates Is Content Still King or Have the Gatekeepers Won? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 328) – Tim Peter & Associates What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) Do You Still Need a Website? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 400) Why AI Makes Customer Experience Even More Important for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 427) Building a Human Brand in the Age of AI (Thinks Out Loud Episode 398) 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) – Tim Peter & Associates Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) 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: 17m 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 Apple Dropping Google? What Does That Mean For Your Business? Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. There was a wild news story this week for folks who are interested in marketing and customer acquisition beyond Big Tech. According to the Search Engine Journal, Apple may add artificial intelligence search engines to Safari as Google use drops. Apparently, Apple is exploring AI search engines like ChatGPT for Safari. This is all from Search Engine Journal, signaling a shift from Google’s $20 billion deal. How will this reshape search competition? Well, this is, to use a technical term, a big effing deal. Seriously, this is massive. Why is this a big deal? Why do you care? How does it potentially reshape what Big Tech means? And most importantly, why does this matter to you and to your business? This is episode 460 of the podcast. Let’s dive in. As Search Engine Journal’s headline probably reminds you, Google pays Apple something like $20 billion to be the default search engine in Safari and on iOS overall, on your iPhone and iPad’s operating system. You might also remember that the Department of Justice, the US Department of Justice, wants to prevent Google from paying anyone to be the default search engine as part of its proposed antitrust remedies. Now to put this in context, $20 billion is a little bit less than Apple makes in profits most quarters. Or to put it another way, it’s essentially a full quarter’s worth of risk-free profit to Apple. That is a big deal right there. In part, this story feels a bit like a negotiating ploy on Apple’s part. For instance, Bloomberg has said that it’s Apple’s way of showing the Department of Justice they don’t need Google to pay them in hopes probably that the court will still allow Google to pay them. They want to make sure that they still get that full quarter worth of risk-free profit every single year. And that seems entirely plausible to me. It also could be Apple presenting its asking price to one of the big AI players like ChatGPT or Proplexity. know, Apple could be saying, you want to get in front of our customers? You got to pay us. Remember, “gatekeepers gonna gate” even if it’s a gatekeeper like Apple charging another potential gatekeeper like ChatGPT or Perplexity. In other words, if the courts say that Google isn’t allowed to pay to be the default, Apple may be keeping its options open so that somebody else will pay to be the default. And in any case, Apple apparently is going to add AI search as alternatives to Google regardless so that you can say, “You know what, I’d like to use ChatGPT or I’d like to use Perplexity instead of always using Google or Bing or Duck or one of the other ones.” The question I think we need to start thinking about though is what if Apple doesn’t use AI as the alternative, but instead get ChatGPT or Perplexity to pay them the $20 billion? What does that mean to you? As you’ve heard me mention many times before, any decline in Google’s business could lead to a huge decline in your business. Google accounts for a plurality, if not an outright majority, of many businesses’ traffic. When you think about organic search or paid search or local search and maps or metasearch in hospitality or product search in retail, those add up to a lot of traffic and a lot of revenue for most businesses. So much so that Google clearly wants to be the first choice on Apple. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be paying $20 billion a year to be there. And the way you want to think about that is that if Apple is important to Google, then Apple is important to you too. Let’s talk about how important that is. Just back in the envelope for a moment, Google made $350 billion in revenue last year and just a bit over $100 billion in profits. They paid Apple something in the ballpark of $20 billion to be the search by default in Safari on Macs and iOS. Now that $20 billion is about 6% of their overall revenues, which means if we’re doing this in an ROI calculation way, they had about a 16.5:1 ROI. In other words, for every dollar Google paid Apple, they made $16.50 in profits, at most. In reality, it was lower than that because it assumes that everyone who clicked on an ad, everyone who used Google clicked on an ad and it also ignores the ads “only” accounted for 54% of Google’s earnings. And for those of you listening to this, I hope you heard the air quotes around “only.” 54% is a huge amount of traffic and a huge segment of Google’s business. It’s just in this case, that would mean that Google’s ROI from their deal with Apple is smaller than a 16.5:1 return. So if we take the fact that ads account for 54% of Google’s earnings, then the real ROI was no better than 54% of 16.5:1, or maybe 8.9:1. We’ll round up and call that 9:1. And there would be nothing wrong with an ROI. But wait, there’s more. Customers don’t click on an ad every time they use Google search. Assuming customers only click on an ad, maybe between a third to half of the time, and it could be more than that, it could be less than that, but it would make Google’s actual ROI probably more like three to one to maybe four and a half to one. I think it’s probably lower than that. Again, that’s still not a terrible number though. But if you flip it around, it could mean is that Apple could account for a huge share of Google’s revenues and a huge share of Google’s profits and a huge share of the traffic that they get that matters to them. And what it all demonstrates to you is how much Google needs that traffic. Remember, Google represents a healthy chunk of your traffic. And if Google needs that traffic, so do you. Up until recently, the potential hit to your business from a decline in Google search was one of my major concerns. And it was a driving factor behind my upcoming book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech . Obviously, one of the things we have to remember is if that Apple share of that traffic goes away, that’s an even bigger problem for you because that will happen immediately. So this remains something you need to think about. What’s also true is that there’s another huge, highly related concern here. And that is, what is your brand experience? What do customers know about your brand if they don’t come to your website? Whether they, Apple, replace Google with Perplexity or ChatGPT, or something else happens, which I’ll talk about in a moment. You may still have people who don’t experience your brand early in the process. Now you might think, “Yay, Google isn’t my biggest concern any longer.” That sounds good in the theory, except there’s a few issues that are big concerns that come from that. One, you’d have to show up in ChatGPT or Perplexity’s answers for customers to find you. Two, showing up in ChatGPT and Perplexity and other AI answer engines often don’t lead to clicks. The same is true for Google’s AI overviews, by the way, and in its AI mode that they’re testing with power users right now. The third issue is that you’d also simply be trading one Big Tech gatekeeper for another. And the fourth thing is that until one of those Big Tech wannabes won, whether it was Google, whether it was ChatGPT, whether it was Perplexity, your company could lose out on a lot of traffic and revenue. Is that bad? Because it seems like it’s, you bad. The worst part is that it’s pretty likely we’re heading to that world one way or the other. It doesn’t matter if it’s zero-click search today—which we’re already seeing—or AI answer engines in the future, or AI agents in the future. We’re probably going to see fewer and fewer clicks. My friend Stuart Butler talked about this brilliantly in his Destination Discourse podcast not long ago. And I think there’s a lot of merit in how we think about this. The question we need to start thinking about, which is, what is brand experience if customers never come to your branded assets? You know, “don’t build your brand on rented land” is great advice. It’s a key point in digital reset. We talk about how you do that. And I think that it still holds up. You know, the people who connect from your branded assets like website, email, SMS, and other CRM activities are going to be huge for your business for a long time to come. My concern increasingly though, and the Apple story points to it and all this rest we’ve talked about points to it, is what happens if those branded assets don’t happen earlier in the process? Or worse, what if they don’t happen at all? I’ve argued, I still argue , that your website isn’t going away anytime soon. I think that’s going to be true for quite some time. I also think we need to ensure that our branded experiences deliver that they connect right out of the gate every time whenever someone does engage with them. It doesn’t mean that they have to purchase. It doesn’t mean that they have to opt into everything. But they do need to connect. They do need to feel some affinity for your brand. We need to be thinking about how brand works when people interact with those messages and when they interact with those channels. I recently heard somebody who put it best when he said, “We implemented demand marketing, which only addresses the 10% of the audience that is ready to buy. We need brand marketing for the remaining 90% to stay so that we stay top of mind until they are ready.” Brand is the sum of every experience our customers have with our business. And that includes our website or our email or our SMS messages or our content or our social presence or in real life presence. And yes, the experiences they hear about from creators and influencers or in search and AI answer engines. We need to remember that it’s OK for customers to find us through some other source the first time they come across our name, anyway. You know, even Google thinks it’s worth paying $20 billion a year so that they show up on Apple the first time somebody, I don’t know, looks to search. You’d think Google would have that one covered already. Where it becomes a problem for your business, is if you have to pay every time customers connect with you. So we have to think about how we build the brand every time we have one of those touch points. Now in the interest of time, I’m not going to belabor the point of how you solve for that right now. I’m not going to ignore it. I just want to hit on it at a high level. You’ve heard me say this before. First, focus on what won’t change. And we know that what won’t change is that content is king, customer experience is queen, and data is the crown jewels. And I will provide a bunch of links in the show notes for past episodes where I covered how you use those in detail. I will admit we also don’t want to go too deep into detail at the moment because you can read about it in the new book if you’d like. I just remember that you can learn a bunch of this from links on this episode. You don’t have to buy the book when it comes out, though I hope you want to. Just keep in mind that this is a rapidly evolving space. Google and Apple are showing why it’s possible even for Big Tech companies to lose and to have new folks take their seat at the table. Your job is to make sure you succeed beyond Big Tech. Keep learning about the situation. Keep thinking about what does it mean when guests and customers connect to us. Your job is to make sure you succeed beyond Big Tech. Your job is to keep thinking about what’s going to happen, how we continue to build a brand if people don’t connect with us the first time directly. And that some of the ways that you can do that is to: Focus on what won’t change. Focus on the reality that content is king. Focus on the reality that customer experience is queen. Focus on the reality that data is the crown jewels. Apply those lessons, learn from them, and then share your learnings with your friends and family and fans and followers too. I know for sure I’d love to hear what you think and I bet they will also. I’m confident you’re going to crush it and I can’t wait to see how you put this to work 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. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too, as I just mentioned. Share what you’ve learned. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 460, as well as an archive of all of our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening today. I want you to know that this show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. Take care. We’ll talk to you soon. The post Is Apple Dropping Google? What Does That Mean For Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud 460) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
My friend Mark Schafer just asked a brilliant question on LinkedIn about whether small and mid-sized businesses are destined to fall behind when it comes to AI. It’s a beautiful post and I’d highly encourage you to read it. Is it impossible for marketers and e-commerce folks to keep up with AI? Is your business doomed to fall behind? In one way, yes. But, in a more meaningful way, I’m not convinced. Instead, there are a few ways that marketers can keep up—and keep ourselves relevant. And those tips and techniques are at the heart of this episode of the Thinks Out Loud podcast. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Is It Impossible for Marketers to Keep Up With AI? (Thinks Out Loud 459) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Mark Schaefer’s Brilliant LinkedIn Post: A Sinking Feeling of Being Left Behind AI Won’t Steal Your Job: Smart People Who Put AI to Work Will (Thinks Out Loud Episode 208) What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) (1) Almost Timely News: ?️ 5 Examples of AI Transformation (2025-04-27) Is AI “normal”? | MIT Technology Review Prompt Engineer, the Hottest AI Job of 2023, Is Already Obsolete – WSJ Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of (Thinks Out Loud 457) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) AI Is Not the Future. You Are (Thinks Out Loud Episode 443) How to Put Big Tech and AI — the Biggest Threat and Biggest Enablers of Your Business — to Work (Episode 428) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? Will AI Kill Your Brand (Thinks Out Loud Episode 435) Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) 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: 16m 00s 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 It Impossible for Marketers to Keep Up With AI? Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. My friend Mark Schaefer had a powerful post on LinkedIn the other day that asked if we’re keeping up with AI. It’s a fairly short post and I’m going to read the whole thing. Mark said, “I have a sinking feeling of being left behind. I’m reading about big companies and their AI reinvention and startups being AI first. But here I am as a small business, fully immersed in the smart ideas of AI and using chat GPT as my sidekick every hour of the day. Yet the foundation of my business is Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and a WordPress blog/website. This is…” and Mark puts this all in caps, “crude. AI is creating iterative improvements, but I’m not transforming. I am augmenting, not re-imagining. I sense that as a small business, I don’t have the ability to really lead with AI, except to maybe be a little better at prompts than the next guy. Thoughts?” Before I get to my main point, I have to give credit to Mark. His authenticity, his vulnerability, and his sheer humanness are models for all of us. As ever, he’s showing marketers and e-commerce professionals and customer acquisition folks the path forward. But his core question has stuck with me. And I think it’s worth your time for us to talk about how we’re likely going to use AI in the future to improve our marketing customer experience and customer acquisition. And it’s especially important to ask, can we keep up? This is Thinks Out Loud , episode 459. Let’s dive in. Mark’s post raises several super interesting questions. As I see it, these are: Are we being left behind by AI? How can we find transformational uses for AI? And… Are small businesses inherently challenged compared with big businesses? I’m going to take these on one at a time. First, yes, we are being left behind by AI, at least in part. I discussed this a few weeks ago in an episode called, “What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs?” My basic thesis was that the infamous line, “AI won’t take your job, smart people who use AI will,” is increasingly wrong. In truth, some smart people will lose their jobs. And it won’t always be to smart people who use AI. It could be to dumb people who use AI. Or to people, smart or dumb, who decide that AI is good enough and a hell of a lot cheaper than continuing to pay smart people. If your job can be replaced by something faster, cheaper, or both, you kinda have to assume that some folks—CEOs, CFOs, et cetera—are absolutely going to use those faster, cheaper solutions at least some of the time. That’s a guarantee. How many of them? How soon? Well, that’s tough to tell. But you’ve got to take it for granted that that will happen some of the time. And you’ve got to do the work now to prevent it from happening to you. One way you can do that is by becoming a better user of AI, which starts to get at the second question a little bit. How can we be more transformational in our use of AI? There’s not an easy answer to this. Part of the reason is that there aren’t that many off-the-shelf products that enable transformational use, especially for smaller businesses. Most of the AI vendors aren’t interested in building traditional products, at least as I understand it. They’re trying to get to an artificial general intelligence, a super intelligence that, if it comes to exist, could end all products and jobs as we know them, to say nothing of, you know, our entire society. If you think that’s hyperbole, you think that’s absurd, remember that an artificial super intelligence would be the equivalent of inviting a far smarter alien race to share this planet with us. Like we could have little green men show up on the planet who are just way smarter than us. I’m pretty confident our lives would change if that happened and probably dramatically. Now the jury is out on whether or not it’s likely we’re going to achieve super intelligence. And candidly, I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it. In our current reality, most of the AI tools we have access to, whether they’re ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or Perplexity or some other cool one you’ve found, really just provide support tools for individuals. I don’t want to diminish them. They’re deeply useful. They’re also deeply flawed. And we simply haven’t necessarily seen them be game changers on an enterprise scale yet. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there are some enterprises and startups who doing cool things behind the scenes using AI. Google and Amazon and all of those folks certainly are working to do those kinds of things. It’s just that most of the implementations that I’ve seen have been largely incremental. Some of them are cool, they’re just not hugely transformational. By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Christopher Penn, who posted an amazing collection of insights about potential transformational uses of AI in his almost timely newsletter the other day. If you care about this topic and you aren’t reading Christopher’s work, you need to change that, immediately. I will link to him in the show notes. I learn from Christopher all the time and I think you will too. As for the third question, are small businesses inherently challenged? Well, yeah. Sort of by definition. But I’m not 100% sure that most of us will need to be power users in the way that Christopher Penn and large enterprises might need to. When Mark put his post on LinkedIn, I replied and what I said was, "I’m reasonably sure that for the most part, people won’t need to get good at using AI. For the same reason, they don’t need to be good at HTTP or how the carburetor in their car works. The details will be abstracted away. They’ll be hidden beneath simpler user experiences, simpler interfaces. Even if we can’t compare AI to Google Search, the vast majority of people never used its Boolean operators or its advanced features. Instead, Google worked to make the product better at understanding what we wanted, or at least they did until they started making it worse, while we simply used it however it worked for us, in whichever way it worked for us. What we need to do instead is be smart consumers of any product and ask questions like, what are the pros and cons of using these tools for me, for my customers, and for society at large? What are appropriate uses of these tools? When is it not appropriate to use them? How can I minimize the risks that they bring to the table? And how can I put AI to work for the largest number of people to the benefit of the largest number of people? I’m reasonably convinced that that is the most likely scenario, that AI will simply work under the hood for us." I’m not the only one who thinks this way. First, MIT’s Technology Review had an article this week called, “Here’s Why We Need to Start Thinking of AI as Normal.” And their basic thesis is highly similar to mine. They kind of say that the complicated bits will lie beneath the hood. We just have to be smart users of the tool. We have to be conscious in how we’re using these tools in an effective, appropriate way. Second, this isn’t just theoretical. We’re seeing AI become more normal every day. The Wall Street Journal had an article recently called, "The Hottest Job Of 2023 Is Already Obsolete." They went on to say,"Prompt engineering, a role aimed at crafting the perfect input to send to a large language model, was poised to become one of the hottest jobs in artificial intelligence. What happened?" They’re saying AI increasingly doesn’t need specialized knowledge. Actually, they’re not just saying it. All of the decision makers who decide where they want to spend their money on finding the right people to get the most value out of their artificial intelligence investments are also saying it. They’re saying prompt engineers just aren’t necessary any longer. Anyone can use AI and get good results. I also think there’s a hidden reason that we have to be conscious of here, and that is that I believe that there is a backlash coming around artificial intelligence. I believe that our customers simply will not embrace it as much as we may think they will, at least some of the time. I’m convinced that customers will absolutely want to work with identifiably human companies, at least for some products and services that matter to them. To use the most obvious example, I cannot picture anyone wanting to use a robot doctor for any serious medical issues, no matter how effective that robot doctor might be. They’re going to want someone they really trust. You know, I’ve always found it funny when we talk about a site like HealthGRADES, which is the the Yelp or the Google reviews or the TripAdvisor for doctors. And what’s really funny is most of the people who write reviews in HealthGRADES don’t actually know whether or not they’re doctors any good because they’re not qualified to. I certainly can’t. I know that I like my doctor. And if you read the reviews about doctors, they’ll talk about, “I really like my doctor. You know, she does a great job or he does a great job.” But they don’t actually understand whether or not the doctor is fully qualified. Instead, what we all look for is somebody who we trust. And I think that’s going to be true for many businesses, particularly in high consideration products and high consideration services. I just don’t see that being unusual, just as it’s not unusual today with people’s doctors. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m reminded of the Bill Gates quote, we always overestimate the change in the next two years and underestimate the change in the next 10. Given that, I don’t know if this behavior among customers will take six months or six years. I will be shocked if it doesn’t happen in a relatively narrow timeframe though. In other words, I think it could take four years, five years. But I don’t think it’s gonna take 10. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it took two, because Bill Gates’ two-year window started when ChatGPT first came out. In any case, I go back to the questions I asked at the end of my reply to Mark’s post when we think about do we have to keep up with AI. I think the questions we need to be asking are What are the pros and cons of using these tools for me, for my customers, and for society at large? What are the appropriate uses? When is it not appropriate to use artificial intelligence? How can I minimize the risks of AI to me, my customers, and society at large? How can I put artificial intelligence at work to benefit the greatest number of people? If you can come up with good answers for those, I’m really confident that you won’t need to keep up with AI. I am confident that you will not fall behind. Quite the opposite. Your customers will want to work with you more than ever. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think too. I’m sure they would love to hear that. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 459, as well as an archive of all of our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. I want you to know this show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe. And as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post Is It Impossible for Marketers to Keep Up With AI? (Thinks Out Loud 459) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458) 12:30
This is a huge week around here. I’ve just announced the release of my new book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech . Which, yay, and all. I mean, good for me. But how does that help you? Instead, what you need to focus on is the animating idea behind the book. And that is that Big Tech wants to be a gatekeeper between you and your customers. They’ve admitted it again and again. The question you should be asking is how do you escape their web and bypass Big Tech? And that’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. I hope you enjoy it. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links More Studies Show AI Overviews Hurt Google Click Through Rates Report: Google AI Overviews Are Hurting Click Through Rates Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen (Thinks Out Loud Episode 188) Is "Content is King" Dead? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 306) Is Content a Strategic Product for Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 319) Is Content Still King or Have the Gatekeepers Won? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 328) Digital Gatekeepers and the Death of Organic Traffic (Thinks Out Loud Episode 247) The Rebirth of Trusted Gatekeepers (Thinks Out Loud Episode 307) Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of (Thinks Out Loud 457) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448) 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: 12m 30s 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: Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch Have you ever wondered how your business could thrive without relying so heavily on Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple? How you can build more human connections with your customers in an age of AI? That’s exactly what I’m going to talk about today. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. So long, in fact, that it’s now a book. This week, I am beyond thrilled to share some super exciting news. My new book, Digital Reset: Driving Marketing and Customer Acquisition Beyond Big Tech , is launching very soon. But more important than the book itself is what it represents for you and your business. I promise you, I promise you that today’s episode is not a pitch. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if you read the book when it’s out. More importantly, today’s episode is a conversation about why the ideas in this book matter for your business right now. And I want to talk about how you can put these ideas to work and build your business to bypass big tech. Are you ready to hear more about how? Cool, let’s dive in. For years, Big Tech platforms have made it easy, maybe too easy, to reach customers. I mean, organic search and organic social were effectively free advertising for your business for a long time. That’s a really cool thing that we can look back on fondly. But we’re looking back on it fondly because that ship has sailed. That is no longer the case. Where are we now? I’ve talked for some time about how increased ad loads on Google and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, along with reduced or more expensive targeting, as well as their ever-changing algorithms, have made that game unsustainable. You’ve heard me say it again and again, gatekeepers gonna gate. They’re going to charge you tolls for access to customers, your customers, your own customers, every time they can. As if they wanted to prove my point, there was a bunch of research released just this past week that talked about how Google’s new AI Overviews hurts click-through rates from Google to the sites that they are “linking to.” Do I sound shocked? No, of course not. This is where we’ve been heading for a long time. This is nothing new and it’s not going to get any better anytime soon. Unless you do what’s necessary to make it better. Fundamentally, this is a question about whether you own your customer relationships. Or if you just rent them from Big Tech. I know which one I would choose. I’m going to quote Search Engine Land here for a moment and share that the studies that I just mentioned include Ahref’s data that shows a 34.5% lower average click-through rate for the top ranking page compared to similar informational keywords without an AI overview. Data from Amsive that shows a click-through rate decline of 15.5% on average when AI Overviews are on the page. SimilarWeb data that shows 20% fewer clicks on search results with AI Overviews. That’s massive, right? We’re talking about at least a 15% decline and as much as a 35% decline. SEO Roundtable also highlighted two other studies that said very similar things in February. So, you know, that’s not great. We’re also seeing clients who have ranked better in Google’s organic search over the last 12 months and actually getting more impressions who have also seen clicks decline. Why? Say it with me now. The increased ad loads and the increased use of AI Overviews in Google’s search results. We see very similar realities from social. If you want to add to the fun, have you seen that Google is getting its ass kicked in two different federal antitrust trials right now? If you’re like most businesses, you’re probably getting somewhere between 40% and 70% of your traffic from organic search, paid search, maps, metasearch, and all the other search products on Google. And if that’s true for you, anything that hurts their business is going to hurt yours too. This is literally the opposite of a win-win scenario. In this case, if Google succeeds in court, if they manage to keep the courts from breaking the and letting them do whatever they want, you’re gonna get fewer clicks. You’re going to have to pay more for the clicks you get because of Google’s increased use of AI. And if Google loses in court or in the marketplace, you’re gonna get fewer clicks because of the reduced market presence. Neither of those is what you’d call good. By contrast, owning your customer connection via email, your website, your app, your CRM drives greater control, it drives greater revenues, and it drives greater profits. We see this again and again with both clients and with other companies we talk to. If I connect this back to the book, to Digital Reset , one of the first things I break down in the book is how businesses can regain control of the customer experience working to escape Big Tech’s web and how that becomes a virtuous cycle for you and your business over time. Think about it. Your customers always are looking for the same thing. They’re looking for value. They’re looking for trust. They’re looking for connection. I’ve said forever that “content is king and customer experience is queen.” Using digital to enhance your customer’s experience builds long-term loyalty and lifetime value. Put simply, if your digital strategy doesn’t improve your customer’s experience, if you don’t use content and customer experience to improve that customer experience, it’s absolutely not improving your business. Ultimately, direct revenue isn’t just about profit margins though. It’s about resilience. It’s about breaking you free from Big Tech’s web and making you not so dependent upon them. Your content helps position you as a trusted resource for your customers. If you don’t have content, you don’t show up in search. If you don’t have content, you and your customers have nothing to share on social. If you don’t have content, you don’t have anything you can send in an email. If you don’t have content, AI tools can’t find you or reference you or recommend you to their users. No content equals no search. No content equals no social. No content equals no email. No content equals no presence in answer engines. This isn’t just about SEO. It isn’t just about social. It’s about building a presence all across your customers day to day experience. As I say in the book, content is your company’s 24/7/365 salesperson and your 24/7/365 customer service rep. Content is the first connection for potential customers with your company. You need to put that salesperson and put that customer service rep to work for your business. Or you can expect to lose your customer’s business, possibly forever. Now the book, Digital Reset , goes deeper into each of these topics. And if you’ve been nodding your head while listening today, I think you’d really get a lot out of it. We’re just a couple of weeks out from the book dropping. I will be sharing more in our next episode, along with a sneak peek of what else you can find there. But what I’d love for you to take away from today’s discussion is, as I say in the book, “Big Tech are the gatekeepers in today’s business environment. More importantly, they plan to charge you a toll, a tax, every time customers connect. Put simply, gatekeepers gonna gate. Gatekeepers and the tolls they collect are one of the biggest threats your business faces right now.” You want to own the connection with your customer, not just pay an ever-increasing rent to big tech. Content and customer experience are two keys to helping you escape Big Tech’s web. And you can think about how you do marketing and how you do customer acquisition beyond Big Tech because ultimately that’s what your digital reset is all about. I hope you’re willing to join us on this journey. I hope you’re willing to hang with us as we go through this over the next few weeks and all. I think it’s going to be a really fun ride and I’m looking forward to having you with us as we do it. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Be sure to let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 458, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening today. This show would not happen without you. I’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. The post Digital Reset: Build Customer Relationships Big Tech—and AI—Can’t Touch (Thinks Out Loud 458) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Google may have just told marketers they can never use AI to create content. Or… maybe not. Their actual recommendations are somewhat more nuanced than simply “AI bad” or “AI great.” What’s important about what they said, though, is that they’re being clear about what they’re looking for — and, more importantly, what your customers are looking for. And their guidelines make it relatively easy to understand when you can use AI, when you can’t, and what you should expect from your AI tools when creating content. In this episode of Thinks Out Loud , we break down Google’s guidance around AI content and lay out how you can make it work for you, your customers, and your business. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… (Thinks Out Loud 457)— Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines PDF link Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) My post on LinkedIn about this topic Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers | The Verge 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: 13m 28s 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: Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. You probably know that Google relies on human beings to review some search results and some web pages, particularly in tough niches. Google provides these search quality raters with guidelines for how to rate the pages they review. In the latest version of these guidelines, which I will of course link to in the show notes, Google tells its quality raters, and this is a quote, “to watch out for pages with main content created using automated or generative AI and rate them as lowest quality.” They continue by saying, “even if you are unsure of the method of creation, for example, whether or not the page is created using generative AI tools, you should still use the lowest rating when you strongly suspect scaled content abuse after looking at several pages on the website. The lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the main content on the page, including text, images, audio, videos, et cetera, is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated…” It continues from there and I’ll come back to that in a minute. This is an amazing document. It almost sounds like Google is saying, don’t use AI to create content, which personally I find hilarious given that they put AI Overviews at the top of a gazillion search results these days. But I digress. That’s not what Google’s actually saying though. So what is Google really saying here? Can you use AI to create your content or not? What’s the real story? This is episode 457 of the Thinks Out Loud podcast. Let’s dive in. The excerpt I read from Google before the break emphasized the AI generated element of the Google Search Quality Rater guidelines. However, when I emphasized that line, I left out the very last part. Here’s the full excerpt: “The lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the main content on the page, including text, images, audio, videos, et cetera, is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated or reposted from other sources with little or no effort, little to no originality and little to no value for visitors to the website. ” Is Google saying that you can’t use AI? No, not really. What they’re saying instead is that you can’t use AI to create crappy content . They’re also saying you can’t use any method to create crappy content. They’re saying don’t put crappy content in front of your customers no matter how or where you get that content. They call out low quality content for what it means. It means that you’ve expressed “little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for visitors to your website.” Which, mean, come on, that feels like we should know that already, right? Forget Google. Can you imagine anyone, any human being saying, “No, really, I would love to see your low effort, unoriginal page that adds no value whatsoever to my life. Please, please, please waste my time that way”? Of course not. That’s never going to happen. So maybe let’s not do that. Let’s start with why AI-generated content is particularly dangerous in this regard, though; why it’s bad for your customers and bad for your business. I’ve mentioned in past episodes that you can’t copyright AI content if it doesn’t include “sufficient expressive elements.” That’s a direct quote from the US Copyright Office. They also call out that copyright doesn’t cover, and again this is a quote, “the mere provision of prompts.” Meaning that if you come up with a perfect, spectacular, never before seen prompt that causes your favorite AI to spit out completely new text, images or video and then present that to the world, the Copyright Office will say, "Bummer, dude. It’s not copyrightable." Weirdly, Google might be okay with that output. Maybe. Depending on whether or not its raters find it of sufficiently high quality. Though, personally, I wouldn’t bank on it. In part, I wouldn’t bank on it because someone else might stumble on an equally perfect, spectacular, never-before-seen prompt that causes their favorite AI to spit out text, images, or video that looks more or less the same as yours. There’s no guarantee that the AIs won’t generate something remarkably similar, and there’s actually some evidence to suggest that they will do exactly that. So it might be decent quality. It might even offer some value. But it’s sort of low effort and it’s likely not terribly original. Or at least it won’t be original for long. Especially since you can’t copyright it. We saw essentially the same thing in search for years, where site owners would hire offshore writers at content farms to spit out tons of SEO optimized — meaning heavily keyword stuffed — content, with titles and text containing words like best and the target keyword over and over and over again. The Verge did one of the best things I’ve ever seen in this regard. They had a hilarious article last year that mocked that practice. The title of the article was "Best Printer 2024, Best Printer for Home Use, Office Use, Printing Labels, Printer for School, Homework, Printer, You Are a Printer, We Are All Printers." Showing, of course, that you can have a sense of humor about these things, Ironically, the article itself was pretty good. Anyway, notice that bad sites were doing then exactly what Google is arguing against now. They were just using human intelligence at the time — and frankly, not much of that — instead of artificial intelligence. It’s the same thing. Google’s not saying AI is bad. They’re saying bad content is bad. Bad content is bad for your customers. Bad content is bad for search results. And ultimately, bad content is bad for your business. It’s not a place you want to be. It’s not a place anyone wants to be. So what should you do instead? What can you do instead? Well, how about we flip Google’s guidelines on their heads? Instead of demonstrating no effort, how about you demonstrate effort? Instead of having no originality, demonstrate originality. And most importantly, instead of having little to no added value for visitors to your website, provide value for visitors to your website, added value for visitors to your website. When I think of quality content, when people ask me what quality content is, it’s that last bit that I always come back to. Your content should, it must, provide value to your website or app visitors. Your content should answer a meaningful question. It should help them solve an actual problem in their lives. It should make their lives at least a little bit better, if not a lot better. Anyone who knows anything about search knows that Google is particularly concerned about what they call YMYL content. That is content that matters to “your money or your life,” YMYL. They want to make sure that any content that ranks for those topics isn’t going to cause people to lose money or damage their health and safety. That seems like a good idea, no? I’d argue that you should take similar care with the content you provide to your customers, even if you’re not in a YMYL business, even if it’s not YMYL information. After all, if you don’t care whether your content matters in your customers’ lives, why should your customers care? Right? This is like 101 right here. If you don’t care about your content, if you don’t care to create quality content, why should your customers care either? This isn’t about AI. It’s about human beings. Do you care about your customers? Do you care about their problems? Do you care about helping them improve their lives or at least improve their day? Of course you do. Then why not make sure that your content shows that you care? You can use AI to help you brainstorm what that content might be. You can use AI to help you outline the content. You can use AI to help you create personas of your target customers so that you’re thinking about the right people as you create those outlines for your content. You can use AI to review your content and find errors in your thinking or your writing. I do this all the time. And yes, you can use AI to help draft some of your content or create alternative or more personalized versions of your content. Just keep your focus on creating content that shows effort. Keep your focus on creating content that demonstrates originality. And above all, creating content that provides added value to your audience and your customers, content that shows you care. Google’s raters will like it better. Google search results will likely rank it more often. And most importantly, your customers will get value from it. And ultimately, so will your business. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 457, plus an archive of all of our past episodes by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. I’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. See you soon. The post Google Says You Should Not Use AI To Create Content… Kind Of (Thinks Out Loud 457) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
So, the economy has been going through it over the last couple months — and especially over the last week in particular. That’s a plain fact. But it’s more than just a tough economy. It’s a bizarre economy. It’s easy at times like this to get discouraged, distressed, or just plain confused about how you can make marketing and customer acquisition work in genuinely bizarre economic times. So how do you do that? What works when the economy is… strange? What can you do to connect with customers when the economy is unpredictable? In short, how does marketing work in yet another bizarre economy? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever (Thinks Out Loud Episode 355) Small Business Trends & Research – NFIB Quarterly SBET Report – NFIB SBET – March 2025 The Conference Board | Trusted Insights for What’s Ahead The Lost Art of Value Adds in Marketing (Thinks Out Loud Episode 277) The Race You Can’t Win Does Discounting Work in a Recession? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 315) Marketing in Uncertain Times (Thinks Out Loud Episode 352) What happened in every U.S. recession since the Great Depression Is a Recession More Likely This Year? Here’s What You Don’t Want to Do (Thinks Out Loud Episode 276) Worried About a Recession Next Year? Here’s How Marketers Can Cope (Thinks Out Loud Episode 264) We’re in a Recession. What Should Your Marketing Team Do? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 291) When Will the Recession End? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 289) Federal Reserve Economic Data | FRED | St. Louis Fed C-Suite Outlook 2025: Seizing the Future U.S. Census Bureau Economic Indicators Consumer Spending Data & Trends – Consumer Checkpoint Economic Insights – Current Data & Trends Shaping the Economy U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Econofact The Economic Data You Need to Make Decisions Through Volatility 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: 20m 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: Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy Hi, I’m Tim Peter and this is Thinks Out Loud . Roughly three years ago, I hosted an episode called “Doing Digital in the Weirdest Economy Ever.” We were beginning to emerge from the pandemic, but as I put it at the time, the economic data was “super, super weird.” That’s a quote. I continued by noting, “It’s not just that the economy is bad, though there are parts of it that very much are. It’s also that it’s really, really strange.” Okay, so now fast forward to April of 2025, and, well, things are kind of bizarre again. For instance, the National Federation of Independent Businesses issued its Small Business Economic Trends Report for March 2025. And their top line comment said this, “The implementation of new policy priorities has heightened the level of uncertainty among small business owners over the past few months. Small business owners have scaled back expectations on sales growth as they better understand how these rearrangements might impact them.” What’s been happening, and you’re undoubtedly aware, is that over the last couple of months, the new administration has enacted some significant tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And then, as you again probably know, over the last week we’ve had those relatively few tariffs, then massive tariffs on the entire world — including an island populated entirely by penguins. Except then, by the end of the day yesterday, those tariffs were on hold for 90 days, replaced by 10% tariffs on everybody. No word about how the penguins feel. None of this, for lack of a better word, is normal. And all of it affects your ability to find, engage, and convert traffic to customers. What you need right now is a plan. Now, I’m not an economist. I’m very lucky that I work with some economists at The Conference Board who’ve helped me be smarter about some of these topics. But today’s show is not going to be about economics or the economy. It’s about marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. That’s what I do. I’m also not going to get into the political side of this other than to say that this level of uncertainty makes our jobs as marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition professionals much, much harder. So what should you do about the current situation as a marketing or e-commerce professional? What can you do? This is at Thinks Out Loud episode 456, and today we’re looking at marketing in another bizarre economy. Let’s dive in. So how do you do marketing in another bizarre economy? For better or worse, this is not a new problem. Between COVID, the financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Great Recession that we went through following that, and the dot-com bubble crash of 2001-2002, this is something like my fifth time through weirdness in the economy. And there are some key lessons we’ve learned again and again from these situations that you can apply when marketing your business. One quick note, today I’m going to talk pretty much exclusively about the U.S. economy. This is already a massive topic. I cannot realistically address all of the differences that might matter in other countries. Most of the discussion will be relevant no matter where you work or live. Just be aware that my data and some resources are necessarily going to be US-centric. The other thing today’s show isn’t is any kind of advice about the stock market. If you’re trying to time the market based on anything you hear from me, that is on you. Really don’t do that, okay? We good? All right, good. That out of the way, there are 10 things I want you to think about when marketing in tough times. And I want to start with a somewhat long excerpt from a prior episode where I stated, “First, be a possiblist. I happen, constitutionally, to be somebody who tends to look on the bright side of things. Not because I’m not a realist, and not because I’m an optimist in any extreme sense of the word. What I am is what Hans Rosling refers to in his book, Thoughtfulness , a possiblist. I try to see the possibilities that exist right now while also acknowledging the reality of where we are. And one tangible possibility that exists where we are right now is that times like these are when you get good at what you do. That’s what I said five years ago. I continued by noting, “I have joked for a long time that I used to be the best digital marketer in history. It’s true. Everything I did worked spectacularly. When was this? Oh, it was 2002 to 2008. When, of course everything I did worked. Of course it’s easy to have everything work when everything’s going spectacularly well. It’s not that hard. Times like these are when you actually learn how to get good at what you do because times like these are when it’s actually hard.” I said at the time, “If you’re a bodybuilder and you’re only lifting very, very, very light weights, every time you lift, you’re probably not going to build a whole lot of muscle. You’re probably not going to get stronger. But if you have to lift really heavy weights at least some of the time, that’s going to make you stronger than when you’re just lifting a very light weight all of the time.” So keep that in mind all throughout this. Don’t think about this time as a struggle, but as the time when you’re going to build muscle and get stronger for the long term. How can you do that? Let’s go through them. One, as much as possible, do not cut your marketing activity . I see people make this mistake again and again. Study after study after study shows that companies that market through recessions or other slowdowns generally outperform companies that shut down their marketing or scale back their marketing significantly. Think about it. Now is when you need marketing most. Now is when your customers have tougher decisions ahead of them. Now is when you stand to gain or lose the most relative to the market as a whole. Why would you choose now to stop talking with and listening to your customers? That simply doesn’t make any sense. Yes, you need to be more focused in your marketing. Yes, you need to be smart with your budget. Yes, you need to make sure you can keep your doors open. That’s true. This now is a definite “Core and Explore” moment where you double-down hard on the areas that work and conduct small tests of new ideas and areas. It’s also a time when you need to be more creative to find new channels, new customer segments, and new markets to sell to. Doing anything else could be the difference between keeping your doors open or not. You want to be creative… And speaking of creativity, it leads to our second thing you want to do. And that is “sell the destination first.” And I’m putting that one in air quotes. This is borrowed from the hospitality and travel industry. What I mean by it is that you need to make people understand why what you offer is worth considering in the first place. And what I mean by what you offer, I don’t just mean your specific product or service. I mean the entire category of products and services in which you operate. In travel or hospitality, I can’t get you to choose my beach resort if you’re thinking of going skiing. I have to sell you first on the idea of going to the beach at all. Then I can sell you my resort. The same is true across other industries. If you think about it, the most common choice customers will make is to do nothing. Inertia is your biggest competitor. If your customers are thinking about getting by with what they already have or what they already know, it’s incredibly hard to sell them your specific product or service. You have to get them to consider buying anything, the kinds of solutions you offer generally before you can begin to sell them what you actually want them to buy, which is your product or service. So sell the destination first. The third thing you need to do is don’t discount recklessly . It’s a fallacy that discounting drives demand. What it does do is hurt your bottom line and make it harder for you to raise prices in the future. Running a race to zero with your competitors is a race that you can never win. Don’t run it. Evidence from past recessions and other tough economic periods we’ve lived through has shown that folks who managed pricing effectively during difficult times made more money both during the problem and after the economy normalized . It doesn’t mean you don’t want to test interesting ideas, but there are three things you can do that aren’t just straight slashing your prices. The first is to offer customers different way to pay. Think things like buy now or pay later or lay away or installment payments. That kind of thing. That works for B2C and B2B. Work out different payment plans that work for your customers versus simply offering them a discount. The second is different offerings. Think instead, instead of slashing prices, think about “value adds” or “value minuses.” Sometimes I call them “value unders.” What can you layer onto your product or take away from to provide greater value without changing the base price of your existing products and services. I have a podcast episode I will link to in the show notes called “The Lost Art of Value Ads” that I would encourage you to check out there. And then the third way to price differently is think about different customers. You know, maybe you offer a specific discount to best customers or new customers or some other market segment that makes sense. As long as you can make it clear to those segments why this is a limited time offer to some distinct group, that usually doesn’t have long term effects on your pricing, so it’s something you can do and test and have great success with. Next, automate everything you can that makes sense . What, you thought there wouldn’t be an AI angle here? I mean, what good are these tools, are these artificial intelligence tools, if we can’t put them to work when we need them the most? AI is a useful tool. It can help you brainstorm strategy and tactics for connecting with your customers during challenging times like these. You can test sales coaching tools or predictive modeling for pricing. You can test Google and Meta’s automated ad tools and a host of other AI and automation tools to help you reach your customers faster, cheaper and better. Now is a perfect time to pick a few ideas and try to put AI to work to grow your business. Now is the time you want to make these tools work for you, because if you learn how to do it now, you’re just going to be in a much better position later. The fifth thing you can do is partner with others in your market . To the point of value adds and sell the destination first, think about whether there are complementary companies you can partner with that boost both of your businesses. Joint promotions, cross promotions. Have them email their list on your behalf. Email your list on their behalf. How can you work together to find new customers or create new markets? You do not have to go it alone. You do not have to think or swim on your own here. Partner with others and get the benefit for both of you. The sixth thing I want you to think about is to make any downturn your competitors problem . Now, I don’t mean this to contradict what I just said a moment ago. You want to be a good partner with people. You also want to make sure that you’re getting a fair share or more of whatever demand exists in the market for your products and services with direct head-to-head competitors. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. They can be great sources of intelligence on what’s working in the marketplace right now and what isn’t. Consider copying some of their successes. I don’t mean violate their trademarks. I don’t mean violate their copyrights. But if you see them doing something cool, what’s to stop you from doing it? And definitely avoid their missteps. If you see them do something stupid, maybe don’t follow them. You know, if it’s like they’re slashing their prices like crazy, maybe don’t do that. Maybe instead ask, how can we show greater value without slashing prices? Because I can guarantee which of you is going to make more money in those cases. This isn’t about kicking folks when they’re down. Try to work together with people to grow the pie and not fight over a single shrinking piece. But just make sure you’re also watching your numbers and your reality and make sure you’re working to get your fair share. Another thing that you need to do is take care of your customers . Remember always that your customers are dealing with the same uncertainty you are. They’ve got concerns too. Think about those concerns in your messaging and how you talk with them. I hate, hate, hate, hate when companies prey upon people’s fears to try and drive sales. Can it work? Yeah, I suppose. But maybe think about your customers as, I don’t know, human beings? Maybe think about yourself in human terms too. Where’s your basic humanity here? What do your customers need? What’s keeping them up at night? And how are you helping them address their concerns and fears? Customers will remember who did right by them in the longer term. Try to be one of the folks that does, and you’re going to have great success in the longer term, not just with what happens today. Next, make sure you’re staying informed about what’s going on in the economy overall . There are tons, tons, tons of amazing, free, regularly updated resources out there. I particularly pay attention to the Conference Board and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Economic Analysis are great too. I also like Bank of America’s Consumer Checkpoint and a site called Econofact, as well. They’re all super, super helpful. If you prefer podcasts, Marketplace is an amazing show, and there are just loads of other resources out there that I’ll post links to in the show notes that can help you make sense of what’s going on with the economy at large. Make sure you check them out. Also, stay in touch with your town or county or state chambers of commerce or convention and visitors bureau. Sometimes the local economy matters more for your business than what’s going on nationally or regionally or globally. Your local Chamber of Commerce or your CVB can provide you insights you may not get anywhere else. So make sure you’re giving them a chance. Finally, this is my last point, don’t be afraid to call your Congress people or senators and ask them to help . This isn’t about politics. I do not get into politics on this show. This is about policy that affects your business and your life. It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle those folks are on. This is about saving your livelihood. It’s our Congress critters’ job to represent our interests. And they can only do that if they know what your interests are, if they hear from you directly. So don’t hesitate to give them a shout and let them know what you think. So yes, we’re in a bizarre economy, but you can succeed no matter what. Remember: As much as possible, don’t cut your marketing activity. Sell the destination first. Don’t discount recklessly. Automate everything you can that makes sense. Partner with others in your market. Make any downturn your competitor’s problem. Take care of your customers, they’ve got concerns too. Stay informed about what’s going on in the economy overall. Don’t be afraid to call your congresspeople and senators and ask them to help. Above all else, be a possiblist. Think about the possibilities here. Now is the time when you’re going to build the muscle and build the strength and get great at marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Or at least it will if you accept both the reality of where we are and keep working towards your positive vision of the future. I know you can do it and 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. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 455, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thanks for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. Until then, please, be well, be safe, and, as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post Here We Go Again: Marketing in Another Bizarre Economy (Thinks Out Loud 456) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) 14:24
If there’s one thing I hate to see, it’s marketers, e-commerce, and customer acquisition folks who talk about AI as if it’s going to solve every problem their business has. Yes, AI can be an incredibly valuable tool. But it’s only a tool. The fact is that AI can’t save your business from bad strategy. Only you can. Thinking about AI as a “magic bullet” is a big reason why so many businesses still aren’t seeing the returns they’d hoped for from their AI efforts. Instead, the businesses succeeding with AI in marketing and customer acquisition are those that have figured out their core strategies first, then examined how they can use AI to execute against those strategies faster, easier, or more cheaply. How can you do that? How can you avoid the “bad strategy” gap for your business? And how can you make AI work for you to gain more customers and drive more revenue? That’s what this episode of Thinks Out Loud is all about. Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links The State of AI: Global survey | McKinsey Gil Amelio – Wikipedia Quote Origin: No One in This World Has Ever Lost Money by Underestimating the Intelligence of the Great Masses of the Plain People – Quote Investigator® Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) 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: 14m 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: AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 Welcome back to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. Anyone who listens to this show a bunch knows that I’m fairly bullish on AI. I think it’s an incredibly useful tool. Research from McKinsey shows that marketing and sales teams are the ones most likely to use AI across a wide array of industries. We see this again and again and again. Sales and marketing teams are the folks who put AI to work. And yet… we haven’t seen a lot of evidence of huge lifts in business from AI yet for all that many companies. Sure, there are a few case studies that get cited a lot. And I’m happy to report that clients of mine are absolutely seeing benefits of using AI. But where’s the big lift overall? Remember, I’m bullish. I think that lift is coming. I see evidence of it with people I work with. The challenge for many companies, isn’t in whether or not you’re using AI. It’s whether you’re thinking strategically about AI and where you should be using it. I still hear a significant number of people say, “Well, we’re playing with AI to see what it can do.” I’m sorry, playing with AI? Isn’t it time to ask AI to go to work? Isn’t it time to think about how AI supports your strategy? The truth is, AI can’t save you from a bad strategy. Only you can. This is Thinks Out Loud , episode 455. Today we’re taking a look at why AI won’t save you from a bad strategy. Let’s dive in. Okay, we all know that AI has made content creation faster and cheaper and easier. Marketers are using it to do that kind of thing all over the place. But creating more content, creating cheaper content, creating content more easily — as much as content marketing matters for your business — is not the same as customer acquisition. AI is great at doing those things. What AI can’t do is the strategic heavy lifting for your business: It can’t define your value proposition. It can’t identify core insights about your customers. It can’t set priorities based on your long-term business goals. Yes, it can help you better understand any of those. It can help you do any of those, again, faster or cheaper or more easily. It’s a great brainstorming tool. At the same time, you have to supply the judgment of what makes the most sense for your business. Let me give you an example of what I mean about judgment from an era long before AI. And it starts with my favorite dumb business quote of all time. I mean, this is just pricelessly dumb. As the story goes, Gil Amelio, who was the CEO of Apple prior to Steve Jobs’ return to the company, supposedly once said to Jobs that: Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction. what? Dude, if you’ve got a ship with a hole in the bottom. Your job is to stop the water from coming in. Your job is to keep the ship from sinking. In that situation, worrying about which direction the ship is pointing guarantees that the only direction it’s going is straight down. Believe me, I’ve seen Titanic like 10 times. I’m pretty sure that makes me an expert on sinking ships. This is not what you’ve got to do, right? At any rate, regardless of my nautical knowledge, Amelio’s quote there is obviously an objectively awful metaphor and it’s even worse judgment. But we often think about AI in similar ways when in truth AI is a tool. Strategy provides the map and without the map the tool isn’t going to do you any good. Anyone, anyone who’s listened to the show for any amount of time knows that I’m a huge fan of thinking about not only what will change in the future, but what won’t change. And no matter how much AI shifts our daily practices over time, there are so many key areas about our strategy that simply will never change, no matter what happens with AI: You still need to understand your audience. That is something that simply will never change. You still need to solve real customer problems. And you still need to build trust and relationships with your customers. There are loads of great AI tools that can help you parse your data to better understand your audience. And you might already own and use some of these tools. Tools like Salesforce and HubSpot have AI capabilities built in. There are also tools that can help you solve real customer problems. You can use ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or custom-built models to brainstorm solutions for how to solve those problems. And you can absolutely use tools like Copy.ai or Jasper or Gpng or any number of chatbots to either create more content or engage your customers or improve your sales teams to try to build more trust and build better relationships with your customers. As you know, there are also plenty of great tools out there that don’t use AI that can also help you do these things as well. It’s not like we’re going to turn our business over to the tool, because the point is that it’s not about the tool. It’s about thinking deeply about your customers’ needs and then focusing relentlessly on how you build better trust and better relationships with your customers. Ultimately, our jobs in marketing and customer acquisition are to build those relationships. You’ve probably heard a quote, it’s typically misattributed to P.T. Barnum, that says, “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” And you can broaden that to the globe, it doesn’t matter. I hate that quote for two reasons. First, though less importantly, it’s actually American journalist and noted cynic H.L. Mencken who was the original source of the quote. Though, if we’re being fair, plenty of business folks have absolutely adopted and endorsed that quote over the century plus that it’s been in circulation. So fine, whatever. The second thing, and far more importantly, is it is deeply, deeply wrong to think that way. I believe, as sure as I believe anything, that you will never go broke treating your customers well, treating them with respect and dignity, treating them as human beings. Especially in an age of AI, I believe that your customers and the market as a whole are increasingly looking for businesses that are actually, authentically human, that actually treat them like they matter. Sure, tools have their place. You should use them. But you’ve got to make sure you’ve got your hands — and more importantly your brains — on the controls while you’re using them. You know, one place I see people turn over control to tools all too often is in scaling too soon. And yes, for some companies, you’ve got to worry about scale. I used to work for one of the largest hotel companies in the world. Scale mattered. We had to think about it a lot. But using AI to scale the wrong things isn’t going to help your business at all. Instead, think about whether you actually have an execution problem, which scale would help with, or if you’ve got a strategy gap. And some ways you can tell whether your strategy is off is some of the ways are Your content drives traffic but conversions are flat, whether that content is created by AI or created by people You’re producing more but you’re not reaching your audience. Another is that your marketing and your sales efforts are out of sync. Another is that you’re measuring clicks, you’re measuring traffic but not conversions or deals. And the last is that your teams are busy, but that they’re not aligned. They’re not moving in the same direction. All of these are symptoms that you have a strategy gap, not an AI problem. All of those are signs that you’re working on the wrong things. And if you’re working on the wrong things, AI simply isn’t going to help you. If you’ve got a gap in your strategy, ask yourself these questions: First, who are we trying to acquire? Who’s the actual customer? The second is, what problem are we solving for them? The third is, where do they go to learn, decide, and buy? And the fourth is, why should they choose us? Those are the questions that actually matter. Then, take the time to revisit your messaging. Look at your customer journeys, look at how people use your website, look at how people use your app, look at how they interact with your sales teams. And then, take a look at your measurement framework. Are you measuring the right things that actually point you in the right direction? And again, once you have those, then you can — and should! — ask, “How can AI help us execute faster, smarter, or better?” You can use AI to help you answer those questions. Ultimately, though, it’s your judgment that will decide whether those answers make sense for your business. Again, AI has made content creation faster, cheaper, and easier. It’s made marketing faster, cheaper, and easier. But faster, cheaper, and easier alone is not going to drive customer acquisition for your business. Also remember that AI cannot do your strategic heavy lifting. It can’t define your value proposition. It can’t identify core insights about your customers. It cannot set the priorities you need to set based on your long-term business goals. Sure, it can help you better understand those. Ultimately though, you have to supply the judgment of what makes the most sense for your business. And it’s only once you understand where it is you’re trying to go, who it is you’re trying to help, and how it is that you can best help them that you should ask the question, how can AI help us execute faster, smarter, or better? AI is a useful tool, but AI will not save you from a bad strategy. Focus on your strategy, and then your tools will help you build even greater success for your business. 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. I’m willing to bet, I’m pretty confident that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the show? Let them know what you think too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 455, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I very much appreciate that. With all that said, I wanted to say thank you so much for listening. This show would not happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week, but I just so much appreciate you tuning in. So until then, please be well, be safe, and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. We’ll see you soon. The post AI Can’t Save Bad Strategy: Why Fundamentals Still Matter in 2025 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 455) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Artificial intelligence plays an ever-increasing role in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Loads of companies and marketers use AI to plan, create, personalize, and measure their marketing activities. In general, that’s a good thing. AI can help you manage your marketing and customer acquisition more efficiently and effectively. So far, so good, right? However, when it comes to content marketing — still one of the most important parts of your customer acquisition process — there’s a huge question we need to ask. And that is: Should you use AI to create your content? My answer is… well, it’s complicated. Should you use AI to create your content? What is the proper role of artificial intelligence in content marketing? How can you put AI to work for your brand and business to drive customer acquisition? That’s the topic of this episode of Thinks Out Loud . Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you. Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) — Headlines and Show Notes Show Notes and Links NewsNet Issue 1060 | U.S. Copyright Office What I learned at the 2025 Google Search Central Meetup in NYC – Lily Ray Google’s John Mueller Says Programmatic SEO Often A Fancy Banner For Spam What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) How Should You Think About Website SEO for AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 448) Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 449) The Rebirth of Trusted Gatekeepers (Thinks Out Loud Episode 307) Content is King, Customer Experience is Queen (Thinks Out Loud Episode 188) Is "Content is King" Dead? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 306) Big Digital Marketing Trends: Who Speaks For Your Business? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 377) When Will AI Get Good at Marketing? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 446) What’s the Point of Your Website in an Age of AI? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 447) I couldn’t find the original “Don’t play nothing,” story. But here’s another that makes the same point: Herbie Hancock on Miles: Don’t play the butter notes! 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: 17m 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: Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? Welcome to Thinks Out Loud . I’m Tim Peter. Anyone who’s listened to this show for any amount of time knows that I still think content is king. When it comes to using digital for customer acquisition, content remains your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 salesperson and your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 customer service rep. Even in an age when you and your competitors can churn out massive amounts of content cheaply and quickly using AI, all the evidence suggests that helpful content that answers your customers’ questions and meets their needs is one of the single most effective sales and marketing tools in your arsenal. That simply has not changed. And that’s undoubtedly why the question I’m asked most often these days is, should I use AI to create content? My answer, no, you shouldn’t. Well, thanks for listening. Okay, obviously I’m joking, at least to a point. The answer is more complicated than just a simple yes or no. What’s more important than just that yes or no, though, gets at the core of why content marketing matters for your business, for your customers, and your community overall. This is episode 454 of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, and today we’re exploring whether you should use AI to generate your content for your company. Let’s dive in. Alright, my earlier jokes aside, should you use AI to create your company’s content? Truthfully, that’s a more complicated question than it sounds. It’s going to take me a moment to unpack the various pieces inherent in that discussion. But in case anyone’s confused by my ultimate answer, I want to give as clear an answer as I can right now: No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100% of your content. I’m going to say that again, you should not use AI to create 100% of your content. Notice though, that I said "100 % of your content." And there are a few reasons why that’s so. First and importantly, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content because at least in the US, a recent report from the U.S. Copyright Office, "concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements." The report continues by saying "this can include situations where a human authored work is perceptible in an AI output or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts." In other words, even if you’re crafting the most brilliant prompt, once you type that genius prompt into an AI system of any kind, then copy and paste its output, as is, without any further modification by a human being, then that work is not protected by copyright. If you’re looking to create brand assets that matter, whether they’re copy or logos or artwork or what have you, letting an AI do all the work is a losing game. Full stop. That alone probably is enough to suggest why you don’t want to rely solely on AI to create your content. If that’s not enough of a reason, pay attention to what the brilliant SEO expert Lily Ray noted in a blog post outlining what Google said in a recent meeting with search marketers. She wrote, ”Google also further clarified that the use of generative AI for content creation isn’t inherently a problem. What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content. If it’s published primarily to generate SEO traffic, especially at scale, it may be considered a violation, but using AI to support a repurpose high quality original content is still fair game." A couple of years ago, Google’s John Mueller talked about the problems with automating content creation, stating bluntly that, and this is again a quote, "programmatic SEO is often a fancy manner for spam." So Google’s being pretty clear how they feel about this. Lily followed up her earlier observation, adding this insightful comment, “This isn’t entirely surprising given that Google is also simultaneously encouraging publishers to use its large language model, Gemini." Google is talking out of both sides of their mouth a bit here, but their overall point actually makes sense. If you’re creating lots of automated AI generated content, which for our purposes, I’m going to call, let’s say, "crap," you’re not helping anyone and they’re not going to reward you with strong placement in the search results. So again, AI output all by itself is no bueno. When I say "No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content," that’s what I’m talking about. There’s one sentence I want to highlight from Lily’s blog post though: "What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content." Think about that for a moment. "The intent and purpose behind the content." Google and the US Copyright Office come at the problem of AI content creation from different perspectives — One related to search, the other, well, copyright — and arrive essentially at the same place. They’re asking, "What are you trying to achieve? What purpose are you looking to serve? Who are you trying to serve? Are you trying to game the system, whether it’s search or copyright? Are you trying to game the system, search and or copyright? Are you trying to generate massive amounts of content solely for the purpose of generating massive amounts of content? Are you trying to pump out colossal amounts of crap? If yes, why would anyone want that? Why would anyone give that any recognition ever? Who does this help?" If your answer is no one, you’re beginning to think about the problem the right way. Additionally, if everyone is using AI to create their content, regardless of copyright implications, regardless of search implications, how does your content stand apart? If anyone can generate exactly the same quality and character of content, why would anyone ever choose yours over your competitors? It’s not just that your customers won’t benefit, though that’s true. It’s likely that your business won’t either. Instead, let’s think about why you’re creating content in the first place. Too many folks have learned that the right reason to create content is because search and social quote unquote require content. You’ve got to feed the beast, right? I mean, we’ve all done it. I post something to LinkedIn a couple of times per week. My team adds another post or two on our company page. I record a podcast just like this one more or less every week. I’ve often quoted the story from Tina Fey’s book BossyPants to clients where she talks about the first time as head writer of Saturday Night Live when she thought the show wasn’t ready and was told by executive producer, Lorne Michaels, "Tina, we don’t do the show because it’s ready. We do the show because it’s 11:30 on Saturday night." There is merit in holding yourself accountable for a certain level of output. So yes, I can be as guilty as anyone of feeding the beast. But while I’m conscious of the algorithm, I try to make sure I’m not ruled solely by it. Don’t forget that the algorithm also rewards content that people engage with, that people enjoy, that they find useful, that exhibits quality. And sure, yeah, that they find provocative. I personally made a decision a long time ago that we wouldn’t be provocative for its own sake. We’re certainly not afraid to tip over sacred cows. We also don’t just do it for engagement farming reasons. People who know me know that I was trained as a musician. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock likes to tell a story that affected me deeply when I was a young musician. He was playing accompaniment behind a soloist in Miles Davis’ band — comping in the vernacular, right? He’s playing behind the soloist. And Miles came over, placed his hands on Herbie’s, and asked him what in the world he was doing. You Miles was not a fan. And Herbie replied, "I wasn’t sure what to play." To which Miles replied, "If you don’t know what to play, don’t play nothing." I’m very sorry for the bad Miles Davis impersonation, by the way. It’s kind of a legal requirement when telling stories about him that you mimic his voice a little bit. "Don’t play nothing," though, is a perfectly acceptable approach at least some of the time for your business. One of the reasons I’m such a fan of content calendars is not because you’ve got to fill in every box every day. Instead, it’s because they help you see where gaps exist and then choose to create content — or not — as it benefits your business. It’s not great when you leave a square on the calendar blank by mistake, but it’s perfectly acceptable — And sometimes a genuinely great idea — to be quiet on purpose. The purpose of the calendar isn’t to create Lorne Michaels "11:30 on Saturday night" urgency. The planning is the purpose. If you have something worth saying, say it. If not, heed Miles Davis’s admonition and "don’t play nothing." If you do have something worth saying, then it’s absolutely okay to use AI as part of your toolkit for creating that content. These tools exist for a reason. You’d be silly not to use them sometimes. ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Ocoya, SocialBee, Jasper, Copy.AI and a whole host of other tools that I don’t have the time or memory to mention play a huge role in helping you plan, create, review, schedule, customize, post, and measure the effectiveness of your content. Those are all legitimately valid uses of artificial intelligence in content creation. I often use AI to brainstorm ideas for our content calendar. I’ll then craft an outline and use AI to review it for missing pieces. I’ll have the AI review my writing to find logical errors or obvious gaps in my thinking. And yeah, sometimes I’ll use AI to draft or clean up a social post when I need some inspiration. Yes, sometimes we’ve also used AI to create images, a practice we’re moving away from because of the copyright implications. This isn’t a case of either AI or nothing. My team and I always have and always will exercise editorial judgment over the final output. Every word you read or hear is written by a human being, is crafted by a human being, even if those human beings sometimes benefit from review or polish from an AI. We’re working to build a connection between our customers and, well, me, a human being. Even in large companies, you can, and increasingly must, put a human face on your messages, on your brand, on your content. Your customers want to interact with real, live people, with other human beings. It’s critical in an age of artificial intelligence that you show genuine humanity. So yes, you can and probably should use AI to participate in the content creation process. But be very clear about the role that AI plays. More importantly, be even clearer about the role you and your team, the human beings play. It’s okay to use AI in the process, but it’s you, your company, and your brand’s name and face that’s on the final output. You, your company, and your brand is who your customers want to hear from, not some generic machine. You can use the tools. Turning the entire process over to the tools though only produces outputs and results that don’t help anyone. To sum up, should you use AI to create content? No, not really. You ultimately are who must create the content. It’s you who your customers want to hear from and your who customers want to buy from. Anything else doesn’t benefit your customers or your business. Show Wrap-Up and Credits Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week. I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too. You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 454, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast . Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast . And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well. Be safe and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. Can’t wait to talk with you soon. Take care. The post Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
I’ve long believed that AI won’t steal your job, but rather that smart people who put AI to work will. After all, marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition roles are simply… The post What If I’m Wrong About AI and Marketing Jobs? (Thinks Out Loud 453) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Content marketing plays a crucial role in driving results for your business. Done well, it’s your organization’s 24/7/365 ” salesperson and your 24/7/365 customer service rep. But the emergence of… The post Best of Thinks Out Loud: Will AI Kill Content Marketing for Customer Acquisition? appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
I’ve long argued that artificial intelligence won’t take your job, but that smart people who use AI might. What you might want to think about though is what “smart people… The post AI and the Future of Marketing and E-commerce — How You Stay Relevant appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
1 Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 451) 16:58
With all of the discussion around ChatGPT, generative AI, and large language models, you’d think that OpenAI’s tools — or those from Perplexity or Anthropic — are crushing Google. It… The post Google vs. ChatGPT: Who’s Really Winning… And Why It Matters for Your Business (Thinks Out Loud Episode 451) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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Thinks Out Loud: E-commerce and Digital Strategy
Is it possible that clicks are overrated in digital marketing and in marketing more generally? Isn’t the point of marketing to drive revenue? I think so, in both cases. You… The post AI, Content, and Revenue: Why Clicks Are Overrated (Thinks Out Loud Episode 450) appeared first on Tim Peter & Associates .…
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