Can Guerrilla Marketing Still Work Today?

Amit Gupta (00:02) So now people consume contents through AI. Okay, they are not reading the content directly. Okay, if they are looking for content, they are not going to Google search more now, which they used to do before. So now they're consuming content in a summarization way, rather than what they used to do is reading right Ben Ard (00:44) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I am joined by Amit. Amit, welcome to the show. Good, good. Thank you so much for joining. Amit, I'm excited. This is gonna be a fun conversation. I've already loved getting to know you in the beginning parts, but before we dive into the subject today, let's let the audience get to know you, who you are, and all that kind of fun stuff. Amit Gupta (00:49) Even how you I'm good Good. Hey guys, I'm basically Amit. I've been on marketing working for almost like 11 years now. I'm one of our tech guys who work on marketing and understand the content and the whole funnel from my end. Been in Fortanix for almost seven years, growing the company, helping the people out to get the revenue. That's it about me. Ben Ard (01:24) I love it. Wow. That was probably the quickest intro and we'll get to more of your background and a lot of stuff. I think in the content of the episode, but I'll admit you have spent your entire career career working on systems and building and growing things. You've seen what technology stacks look like and what they should look like. You probably have some horror stories about when they were built really improperly and all that kind of fun stuff. But with today's journey of AI, And vibe coding and all of these new tools and the MarTech stack is getting really, really messy. What have you kind of seen as far as technology goes, it's kind of progressing through the ages and where is it kind of turning with AI? What are some of your observations along the way? Amit Gupta (02:05) So the major observation then is around content creation as everybody knows. Okay, but that content consumption, okay, towards the people has been changed altogether, as you know, okay. We used to create content using different, different tools, like Gammaly to actually update their grammar on that particular content. But now they use Gammaly, they use different, different tools to actually make that content from there. So how that content is basically used in the technology side is also different. Okay, emails, landing pages, blogs, etc. can be written in almost like a minute, okay, for now. But the actual quality of the content, okay, is almost different. So now people consume contents through AI. Okay, they are not reading the content directly. Okay, if they are looking for content, they are not going to Google search more now, which they used to do before. So now they're consuming content in a summarization way, rather than what they used to do is reading right Okay. That's a change and because of that, there's a lot of advancement and lot of data which has got missed out. Okay, because we used to get all these data. Where are the people coming from? What they read? What they don't read? Now, if they're coming from GPT, they're coming from first city. We don't know what they read. Okay. So now the problem is really we ask like how to nurture them, what to show them, how to target them. Okay. It's a different advancement, which I'm actually seeing it to solve that. There's no, there's no other system right now, which has basically created because We are in a place like until and unless a person is coming from this AI search engine to a particular page, okay, we never know what they're searching for. Okay, the ads, as you know, the Google ads and all that has changed their whole advancement on AdWords to more on AI. You give money to the AI, they will run the ads. You are not running the ads anymore, okay? So that AI advancement is basically, it's good. And it's bad for us as a marketer because we cannot use more data sets to actually target them now. Okay. And that is a black hole. I feel is basically coming for a lot of them are marketing folks right now. Ben Ard (04:08) Yeah, I love that. And I think that's a really, really good observation. I've seen the same thing and it is interesting. So what you're talking about that kind of came to mind is this concept that AI sits between us and other businesses. use AI to collect information from those businesses. AI sits between me and even my own Google ads account that AI is actually running at. So when you're looking that in the future of content, Amit Gupta (04:25) Exactly. Ben Ard (04:31) Where do think that's going to go? Are we all just going to have AI agents that are communicating with each other? Do you think websites are going away? How do you think content is going to evolve? Amit Gupta (04:40) I would say my methodology and my analysis actually says that people like marketers, okay, incoming this, they're going to create their own AI agents, which will be called as an extension, a Google Chrome extension. Okay, they're going to run those AI agents to actually do half of the analysis work they're doing on this marketing automation tools which they are doing. Okay, analyzing which leads come from where... the prospecting can be done, etc, etc, and all that. this will, what my understanding is, this will lead into a place where I will not say Google is not going to be there because Google has also got the AI overview because I use it almost every day now. Okay. So I would feel is the major problem we are going to go with this on the marketing again is personalization. Okay. We'll not know what to personalize with that person. Okay, it's going to be very, very difficult because in ABM, the account based marketing also works on intent and that's intent is basically on web. Okay, people are changing from the intent from web to AI search engine. AI search engine is not going to give all the like prom data to people. Okay, so this ABM, what they will do in coming days if their intent is not clear. Okay, if they're not going to search on Google, what these tools will do in coming future. Okay, so. My understanding, every company who is like Sixth Sense, Demandbase, and all these ABM tools, they need to start working on understanding how to get these data from these search engines in incoming days, because that's going to be a black hole for lot of the companies in coming days. I can tell you that very clearly today. Ben Ard (06:16) Yeah, yeah, I love that. So if I'm sitting here and I'm listening to this podcast and I'm a marketer and I'm like, shoot, you're right. Like this is going to change everything. How can I start today to kind of future proof myself when it comes to content creation? And then really what I love that you're talking about, like data collection. know there's not great platforms yet, but how would you kind of start to think about it? What are you even doing today? What do you recommend for people to start doing right now? Amit Gupta (06:43) good question. So let me just give you this understanding. So what I actually ⁓ presumed, which was going to happen like a year back, okay, the we used to use or used to create content on various topics. Okay. And those topics were, hey, 10 benefits to data security or 11 benefits to data security, because these benefits and these long form content used to be a very good. place where Google generally show you and the top engines. Now this has been changed. Now this has been changed to what, how, who, etc. It's like five marketing principles which we used to define. And these AI engines are basically, so if you ask any question, you ask question this, what is data security? How to take care of this KMS, like a solution? how to solve this problem because the AI is going to reply back in those what, how, and those type of questions majorly. Then you continue your conversation with the AI because everything starts with those questions as you know. Like for you, you are searching for a person on LinkedIn, suppose, and if you want to search a person, who are the most influential marketing folks? So those things needs to be taken like, People need to change their content strategy towards more like FAQs. Okay? And if they don't do that today, they're not going to surpass their life or their inbound, okay, in coming future. As simple as that. Ben Ard (08:08) I love that. I love that. So I love that the FAQ based. It's kind of interesting. I know a while back people were talking about voice search and how to change it because it's more conversational, but a hundred percent. love that. you know, I, I'm guessing a lot of people don't remember, but when Google first came out, we didn't really know how to search yet. You know, like now it is just like top marketing softwares or something like that. That's just secondhand nature for us. When it first came out, we didn't know like, should I type a full sentence? Did I just do keywords? Like what, does it actually use? And now with AI, people are kind of figuring out AI is a conversation and the best AI results will come from me asking specific questions and you need to answer those. So I love that response there. Amit Gupta (08:48) The major problem right now, Ben, I would say is we as like human being, okay, is so when we used to communicate with search engines, like normal search engines, it was keyword specific. Okay. Now it's more ⁓ conversational specific. Okay. So the change from keyword, okay, understanding to conversation is altogether different. Now people wants to have a conversation with the bot. to give them more clear understanding. The prompts are more defined towards conversations, not to the keywords. So people need to grow. That's it. Ben Ard (09:21) Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And again, we talked at the very beginning where people are going to interact with AI instead of with your specific brand. And when it came to Google search results, you would type keywords and you were forced to get the exact version that that company wanted to write of that piece of content. But now I like asking AI. And I think this is why search results are changing to AI because I can say specifically knowing me. and all the things I'm looking into, what is the best software for this or what are the solutions here? And that AI will bring in those answers and it is always a personalized response. There is not a canned response in the system. It's directly for me. Amit Gupta (10:03) I will tell you a very good example which is coming to my mind right now. And this is basically for all researchers because you see inbound is only works when it actually people research about it. If you want to buy a CRM software, what you will do, you start researching about it. What is the CRM? What does the US sector and all that. And every place you go, there's a form in the journey which you need to fill out from your thing. Now take an example. ⁓ Pupricity comment with yourself. Okay, what you ask Pupricity is hey, can you research about everything? Download any forms only you get okay with different different email IDs get all the data sheets all the different different documents Okay, summarize those documents and give me a very clear understanding with a comparison statement, which can be done in a way So you see the advancement? Okay from marketing for us Where will we target those people? Where will know who are those people if the people on the other side is so smart? Okay. So now the whole inbound engine needs to be rethought right now. That is what I am also trying to understand that if somebody is using Comet, okay, from their side, I will never know who is the person actually visited the pages or not. Okay. Or the person, if the bot is visited. That's why you see in Marketo, even in Salesforce today, even HubSpot today, There is something called as bot clicks, okay? On email clicks and because people are actually outsourcing their work to the bots to do. Okay? So now I'm telling you the major problem everybody is going in the front of marketing side on the advancement of AI technology is they will never know whom they're talking to. Okay? Or the person who actually came to their CRM is actually the correct person or not. Okay, or they even remember they have filled out a form by the way, okay, the whole lead scoring pattern, D scoring pattern, everything is in a very big place to solve it right now. That's that's what I'm solving right now to be very frank. Okay, because in the data security world, all these CISO, CIO, solution architects, all are using AIs. Okay, and we know don't know what they're doing around that. Okay, so that's what I feel is basically required. Everybody needs to think about it. from my end in the technology advancement right now. Ben Ard (12:16) Yeah, a hundred percent. And I love the train of thought and I love the conversation here. Like I love that you brought up email. I hadn't really thought of it before, but at some point in time, we probably will stop reading emails. Our AI will probably read our emails for us and say, Hey Ben, Amit just confirmed your appointment. Sweet. That's great. Tell him thanks. And I won't know if it communicates to you via email, text message, or sends a bat signal for all I care. It's going to do all of it for me. And it's going to be really, really, you know, again, there's going to be that intermediary. So it's interesting that we have to write for the assistants of the world that are going to be the interpreters of content for people. Amit Gupta (12:56) So that's what I told you, right? You are not talking to human anymore. You're communicating to agents. So if you're communicating to agents, you need to write in such a way incoming days that agents understand and then reply back to you. So the one-on-one conversations in outbound marketing to be verifying as a channel is getting changed. Okay. You need to be more converting more conversation because still let me show you a very good example on the stack. Microsoft Copilot. or Google Gemini, or you take Comcast, whoever has an email service from there, all have the bots, individual bots defined to each of the users. They are reading it, they are summarizing it, they are opening the emails, then whom I am talking to at the end of the day. So converting a particular account from Ben Ard (13:40) Yep. Amit Gupta (13:48) There's a positive side and negative side of things. Positive side is because the bots are majorly being advanced and involvement and they have evolved, the companies have evolved, their deal cycle for us will be smaller because their conversation has been much better. But for the people who are not even converting, okay, or conversational converting through bots, they are years behind. But problem with us that they're in the middle. Okay, they have some on AI agent, some on human. So some of the conversations they even don't understand and there's some conversion going to bot. So now the confusion is for the companies, what the forecasting will go wrong. You're seeing what I'm trying to understand is the funnel is going in a very different shape on each of the stages from our side. Now the deal funnel is also getting cracked because this agents are basically helping other company like the customer to actually give their summarization. And for us, We don't know the F about what's going on with the customer, right? Even let me give you one more very good example. Okay. The email ⁓ when there's a sales guy, okay, who is trying to reach out to the prospect, the decision maker. Okay. And the decision maker is very cool, very understanding using bots, etc, etc, and all that. Okay. He is actually reaching out to the person again, again, again. Okay. He is sitting near to the sea, chilling. Okay. Ben Ard (14:43) Yeah, I love that. No, I love this. Keep going. And this is great. Amit Gupta (15:07) and has asked a bot to take care of the emails which is coming and give them the replies or certain replies from their side. He created a flow. Okay, from his side. If the email comes from a vendor outside the vendor give a reply to them. The sales guy is reaching out the bot is replying back. The sales guy is so happy. Hey, the person has more engaged with the deal score has gone up, etc. etc. And then suddenly what happens is the person is on leave. Okay, the person even don't know that the email has been came from the sales guy. And that's where one of the biggest thing is going to work. And I feel that the personalization needs to be done through calls. The emails is going to be a communication factor when the person knows. But the call will change the industry in coming days. But there again, ⁓ Apple actually came up with a new this filtration on the bots. that if the spam calls are coming, if the people are coming from this, you take the understanding and then you dump the call or you don't dump the call. But how to solve that is, there's a different, different tactics to be done about that. But that's why saying that advancement towards this, you need to think about it. Like the companies need to think about it right now. If they don't think about this right now, it will be another place where people needs to more see why the things are not converting, majorly. Ben Ard (15:57) Yeah. Amit Gupta (16:22) OK, in coming days. I'm not talking about enterprises, but for the SaaS, we generally sell guided things. All are going to be changed over there. OK, and then marketing will be by the way. Ben Ard (16:32) Yeah, no, I think that's interesting. I love it. Now, I'm it. We have run out of time and I find it fascinating, but just kind of moral of the story for everyone listening. You're going to have to consider if you're writing for bots and agents, or if you're writing for people, and if you're only still writing for people, you might need to reconsider that or at least putting it in a format so that an agent can communicate that to a real person. And I think there's a lot of insights there. Amit Gupta (16:38) Okay. Ben Ard (16:59) We could go on for days, we do have to keep these episodes short so people can listen on the go. If anyone wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Amit Gupta (17:07) Just search for Amit Gupta Photonics in LinkedIn and I can tell you only one person works over there as a marketing on Amit Gupta. You'll find me over there directly. Ben Ard (17:16) I love it. And anyone listening, just go to the show notes. We will link to Amit's LinkedIn profile directly in there. And so you can click on the name and connect with Amit directly from there. Amit, thank you so much. This was amazing. I really do appreciate it. Amit Gupta (17:29) Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me.