Today’s guest is a seasoned marketing executive with a proven track record of helping companies tackle marketing problems. With over 35 years of experience he’s worked with large corporate environments, small organizations with minimal marketing, and everything in between. Our guest this week is a fractional CMO at yorCMO. Welcome to the show Ken Acer! Ken joins host Joe Frost for a discussion on identifying the different marketing needs of organizations, the value of AI in marketing, and how to distinguish between fads and innovations. 

Takeaways:

• There is no one right answer to what marketing means to you. Marketing spans a wide range of ideas from strategy to product. Ultimately marketing is what your organization needs for long term growth. 
• When revamping your marketing department, start by looking at the competition. If you can identify their market size, market share, and how they serve customers, you can identify where you best fit into the market. 
• When it comes to distinguishing between fads and long term customer needs, you need to observe your customers. Talk to real users and observe what features they may be adding themselves, and understand why they are doing it. 
• When forecasting customer needs, you need to focus on things that offer a concrete benefit to the customer. While a certain marketing fad or new technology may seem promising, if it doesn;t actually benefit the customer, don’t focus on it. 
• When looking at using a tool, you need to understand the why behind the tool first. Wanting to “use AI in marketing” is like “wanting sales reps to make phone calls”. Focus on use cases for technology, rather than just the usage of technology. 
• One major benefit of conversational AI models like Chat GPT is its ability to compose data in people friendly formats. Asking for help on the first draft of an email to a client or the demographics of a company are valuable uses of that technology. 
• As a marketer, part of your role is to help enable your sales teams, but finding balance between the departments can be difficult. You need to help them with short term goals while focusing on the long term initiatives of the company.

Quote of the Show:

“You have to be able to try to think about what the unmet needs are today that will be important in two or three years”. – Ken Acer

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenacer/ 
• Website: https://yorcmo.com/ 
• Website: https://yorcmo.com/ken-acer/ 

Ways to Tune In

• Amazon Music – https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9a0b6e7b-76d7-4909-ab01-e3082d6637e0/the-fractional-c-suite-retreat
• Apple Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fractional-c-suite-retreat/id1597847745
• Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/5Z2uHcI4xXz92M9sODSoYL?si=a89b68adf7134964
• Google Podcast – https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJhY3Rpb25hbGNzdWl0ZXJldHJlYXQuY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s
• Stitcher – https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/agencies-that-build/the-fractional-csuite-retreat
• YouTube – https://youtu.be/bEyCXTYm_rA 

Joseph Frost, Co-Founder of yorCMO, hosts this weekly retreat for executives to unwind and hear from their peers about new opportunities and innovations in the C-Suite. Subscribe