How Do You Cut Through AI Noise?

Bernie Goldenberg (00:02) to engineer it in a way where this is the subject matter expert on pulling insights and what questions would I ask a subject matter expert on market research and customer insights. I think that's the way I kind of approach it and based off of the information that it comes out, prompts me to ask, the next question. Ben Ard (00:46) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Bernie. Bernie, welcome to the show. Bernie Goldenberg (00:51) Thanks for having me, Ben. Ben Ard (00:52) Yeah, Bernie, I'm excited. You have a cool story about how you hit into the space and all that fun stuff, how you got into marketing. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we dive into the subject so the audience can get to know you a little bit about yourself before we dive in. If you don't mind. Bernie Goldenberg (01:07) Yeah, for sure. So I'm Bernie Goldenberg. Currently I'm the director of product marketing at Zappi, which if you do know about it you don't, it's a B2B enterprise market research and insights platform that helps brands with their product development and the associated advertising that goes to presenting those products to you out in the market. I've been working in the AI space now for about five, six years, but started my career working in film and being a production assistant and copywriter and things of that. And through a bunch of curves and turns, I found myself in the product marketing space. But yeah, super excited in the career that I've landed in and even more excited about the direction it's going, working in product marketing specifically with AI software. Ben Ard (01:54) love it. That's so cool. And you have some cool experience like you've been at a bunch of AI companies before it was even cool and all that fun stuff. So what we're going to talk about today for the audience is we're going to focus on building positioning, positioning that actually resonates by using customer insights. And that to me is super cool. And you obviously already work at a company where you're using crazy technology to get these insights. So this is like First degree education, second, third, you've got all the knowledge here. I'm really excited to dive in. So when we're talking about positioning, how are you starting to collect customer insights? Where are you collecting those? Talk to me about the process of getting those insights and then maybe we can move on a little bit later into how you're applying those insights. Bernie Goldenberg (02:19) Yeah. Hahaha Yeah. So I guess, yeah, from like my perspective and the way I, again, this has been kind of an iterative process of how I would pull a consumer or customer insights. But I always first kind of like to say that not every like positioning project that's based off of the off of the insights that you do needs to be like a hundred slide deck, right? I like to, or I have in the past, use more scrappy methods. One of your best resources, especially coming from the B2B space is your sales team, right? Talking to the folks that are actually selling the products that you're putting out into the market. Again, sometimes what they say is a little different than when you actually listen to the sales calls. So I implore you to do both of those things because you might catch something being a fly in the wall that again, they might read something one way, which could be true as well. as what you might hear coming from a customer. And again, the ears of a product market are different than the ears of a salesperson, right? Our end goals might be the same in terms of, we want conversion. We want that sale to convert, but the pathway and that funnel is a little bit different. So that's one of the key things. Also customer support calls as well as customer success. So those things are a little bit different, right? With customer success, they're a great resource or in some companies it might be account management. They're a great resource because They are in constant communication with the customers. They're the ones that are kind of hand holding them as they're kind of functioning and using your product to achieve the goals that they're trying to achieve. Customer support is a great resource because you're hearing what's not working or issues that they're having directly with the product. So all of these little tidbits, right, can all be like combined together into kind of developing that voice of the customer or voice of the prospect to give you these insights. And then one of the other great tools, especially in the B2B space, and you probably use this in B2C as well, but social listening specifically on LinkedIn or software review sites, things of that nature, you're seeing what they're saying to their colleagues or to their network about your products. So again, it's this amalgamation and the smorgasbord of different places that you can pull these insights from, where you can actually kind of draw a full picture of what the market, what prospects and what your customers are saying and feeling about about your product. Ben Ard (04:56) Okay. I love it. So we've got review sites. We've got social listening, like LinkedIn. We've got sales calls. We've got support success slash account management. We're collecting from all of these really cool places. I love that. Now, when you collect it, how do you, you talked about the voice of the customer. How do you compile it? Like, what do you, where do you put it? What, well, what does that turn into that starts to kind of influence your positioning? Bernie Goldenberg (05:08) Yeah. Ben Ard (05:23) Is it a document? Is it a spreadsheet? Is it a notepad? Like what, what does that start to look like? Bernie Goldenberg (05:27) Yeah. Yeah. So I've, I've, I've done them all where, you know, where early in my career would be a spreadsheet with a lot of tabs, right? Depending on where the source is coming from links to, you know, links to the gong calls or to wherever the recorded conversations were screenshots of, of, comments or reviews on those websites. So I've done that notion has been a great tool just because it integrates well with so many, Ben Ard (05:37) You Bernie Goldenberg (05:52) different other tools where I can pull this information from. So I do enjoy creating kind of like a page in the document from that, but to kind of assess it, ironically, I work in the AI space. So tools like Claude and chat GPT, can, after I create the document and I do a little bit of my own prompt engineering where I can kind of put in a prompt and customize it where I say, all right, filter out, you know, all the positive, you know, Notes that that came from from this document that I've put together pull out all the negative ones. All right, great Now I have this now I could filter further Let's go down to value. Let's say benefits or value drivers, right? So depending on what your product is, let's just do for an example Let's say our main value driver that we believe in is, you know Speed to market and revenue growth. All right, let's do a search on where that's referenced either positively or negatively And what are the associated commentary or conversation around that? And now we could start, and you can keep filtering down depending on recent messaging, things that are perceived about your product in the market. However you want to, again, create that prompt to help you filter down, we'll start kind of making that funnel a little bit skinnier till you start getting down to the nitty gritty details. And then you could maybe find something that you weren't even looking for, right? You might think your messaging is, you know, A, B and C. And then after you go through all these filters, you say, Hey, they're saying a lot about our pricing and that's why, you know, whatever it might be. And it's like, wow, we didn't even think about our pricing. We're always positioning ourselves as, know, like I said, like either a revenue driver or being, you know, speed to market, but really we're a price disruptor, you know, who would have thought. And now it kind of switches on how can we put that into our positioning going forward using that key insight. But even getting that right now, you want to go back and maybe take it to some existing customers and be like, Hey, we've been hearing, you know, through our research that, know, we're, we're looked at this way, you know, how do you feel about this? And, know, you can, you can curate a bunch of questions and kind of like a more direct correspondence with, with certain customers where you feel comfortable to get the right feedback and they can either confirm or, or not what, what you kind of found in your research. That's kind of the way I've been doing it now. Ben Ard (08:03) Now when you're confirming back with those customers, is this in a survey, phone calls? What's kind of typically your preferred method for actually kind of getting that, you know, refinement from them? Bernie Goldenberg (08:09) So, yeah. Yeah, there's, I like to take a multi-pronged approach because you could, so the low hanging fruit is like, let's create a survey and send it out. But I'm sure I'm not going to pull a number out of, you know, where, but I'm sure we could pull the data that the conversion rate on those surveys probably in the single digits. So I would still create it for, you know, just to check that box. But I think sometimes it's best, again, go to your account management customer success team and, and take a look at who of the customers have been with us the longest, maybe create a customer advisory board and set up an actual meeting where you can get multiple opinions from different customers all at the same time. Again, you can figure out what the incentives are for them and maybe they get some kind of discounts on the product that they're already using or access to an alpha or beta program of a product that you're about to build that you know they would love or that they need for some type of... a project that they're going to work on, you could figure that kind of stuff out. But usually I find talking directly to customers is the best. But yeah, if you want volume, sometimes a survey with some, again, some type of incentive attached to it might drive a higher conversion or completion rate around it. But yeah, kind of do that two pronged approach where speaking directly and trying to get them to fill out some information for you. Ben Ard (09:17) Yeah. I love it. So when you're talking to the customer, either in person or in survey, have you already altered your positioning and you're kind of showing finalized materials to say this resonates with you? Or is it earlier in the process to say, hey, we're hearing this trend, does that resonate with you? Or do you do a little bit of both? Bernie Goldenberg (09:41) Yeah. A little bit of both, I'll probably say the latter. I wouldn't finalize anything until you've kind of dug a little bit deeper, maybe create some like skeleton version of messaging hierarchy or updated positioning and maybe even show them like side by side. Like, Hey, if you aren't, we're in a customer today and kind of do an AB test basically. And you saw, you know, these two different one pagers or whatever piece of collateral that you're trying to share. Maybe it could be a two different 30 second snippets of something, it could be a couple pages of the beginning of a slide deck or something like that. But they have those slight tweaks to it, to the messaging or to the positioning, and then get feedback from there. Or you could split the group, right? Let's say you have 10 customer advisory board, right? You show your original, your latest to five of them, show different versions of the other five, and now get the feedback that way and compare and contrast. There's different approaches. Again, I guess it also depends how long have those customers been with you? Have they seen the positioning that you currently have? Are of that group, some of the ones that influenced the new positioning that you might be that you might be going in, right? So the way you approach it needs to be catered depending on who that group of customers are. But yeah, I like the A B testing approach. I like, you know, testing different ways to get that information, but I don't want to finalize anything until I feel confident that all right, we're. we're heading in the right direction or hey, maybe we need to take a step back and review. Ben Ard (11:07) Okay, I love it. So I wanna kinda go back, we're getting close to the end, so I wanna go back a couple steps, because I love that you're laying out this whole process. I think it's absolute gold. When you've got that content and you're talking to ChatGPT, how are you kinda pulling out, like, what insights should I gather? Like, how are you finding the nuggets through the data that way? Bernie Goldenberg (11:26) I mean, it's a good question. I I think it kind of evolves with the conversation that you're having. Again, if I'm the one who put it together, still know in the back of my mind, because I'm the one who put together the original document that I fed into the system. again, I work in AI, I love AI, it does hallucinate sometimes. Let's not mess around here. I will know if it spits something out at me that's complete BS that like you made that up. That doesn't make sense. So now I need to kind of clean up my prompts. And yeah, I think it just becomes a function of if this was, I need to engineer it in a way where this is the subject matter expert on pulling insights and what questions would I ask a subject matter expert on market research and customer insights. I think that's the way I kind of approach it and based off of the information that it comes out, will it kind of prompts me to ask, you know, the next question. I'm trying to think of like a good example for this, but yeah, I've had times where I knew that like I pulled in all these insights and there was a lot of information coming in that was again, that I think I used the example earlier, but it revolved around us being like fastest to market and all these things. And then it started spitting out things to me. that had nothing to do with our prior positioning or with the stuff that I saw that was common coming from listening to some of the gong calls. It like hallucinated something about being scalable in an industry that we don't even sell into. So I was like, we don't do that. I don't know where you pulled that from. Can you go back and think again and think about it from the perspective of this was our positioning, whatever, two years ago. this is what I'm hearing now. Is that consistent with what you're seeing in the research that I provided? And then it'll kind of go back and filter through again. But yeah, it's, yeah. With AI again, you need to check almost like we were talking earlier about our kids. You got to check that because it's kind of like a crazy kid who thinks they know everything. Often they know a lot, but they don't know everything. They'll hallucinate a little bit and say some stuff that makes no sense. So that's sometimes best to not just take it for Ben Ard (13:28) Yeah Bernie Goldenberg (13:32) for whatever, for what it's called. You gotta, whatever, check their words and make sure that it makes sense because, Ben Ard (13:39) I love that. Okay. We're almost out of time. One final question. When you're having these follow-up interviews with customers, I have seen firsthand experience where people are like, if we were a car, what kind of car would we be? Or things like that. Do you have any like go-to questions and they don't need to be the car questions or things like that, but any go-to questions that you feel like you're able to pull insights out that people could maybe steal from you? Bernie Goldenberg (13:51) hahahaha Yeah. You know, I don't, I'm not one who usually uses those like analogy type questions. I'll give like an example, but I like to be very straightforward. think the best way to pull out insights that are going to help drive your messaging or positioning are being straightforward about what do you care about? What is, because sometimes it's not just what's important to the brand, but sometimes the person that you're selling to, especially in the B2B space, this is someone in a high position. They might be an executive. they have their own KPIs and OKRs and things that drive them. So a good example is, so when I was at Persado, we were kind of positioned ourselves heavily around, again, the AI copywriting angle that we're going to bring the words that matter to your customers within your marketing language. So again, it made sense internally. That's what the product did on the surface. And as we started talking with customers, especially executives from like big retailers and these financial services brands, we kept hearing like a bit of a different story because I would ask the question like, what matters to you, especially with with CMOs and they're like, listen, yeah, the right words are great, but I care that the email campaign is driving extra million dollars in revenue this quarter. So that's kind of like when all right, that's what they care about. And again, we heard that from multiple executives. They have a goal of we need, you know, incremental lift of this much revenue this quarter or by H2, we need to drive this much revenue. So that revenue number kept coming up. So we realized that we had positioned as this awesome AI, almost like writing assistant tool, but customers saw us almost more as a revenue optimization platform that's powered by AI language. So we were able to shift the positioning based off of that question that... you know, that we led with the outcomes, I guess you can say, which improved conversion rates, uplift, ⁓ higher ROI, all those things. And yeah, the AI language generation became the proof point, but it wasn't the headline anymore. So that shift completely changed how we went to market. So we weren't just in the AI tools category anymore. We were on the growth driver category. Right. And that just comes from asking those direct questions. What matters to you? What matters to your brand? What matters to your team? What's the driver for you guys and how And you know, how does our product benefit that? And if it doesn't, how can it, you know, maybe we're missing something. Maybe we need to build something that'll help you achieve those goals. Cause at the end of the day, any, whether it's a B2C product, B2B product, it sells because it does something for the customer. What does it, you know, what's important to them, right? Bottle of water, they're thirsty. They're looking to quench their thirst. Or if it's not just regular water and it's, I don't know, there's like prime. want to look cool while quenching the thirst, right? That's still sufficing a need of some sort. So B2B, B2C, it doesn't matter. They all have that need. They'll have some kind of urge to fulfill or a KPI to meet, right? How do you meet it? I guess is the way I would frame it. Ben Ard (16:54) I love it. I love the direct approach. I love your process. This has been awesome. Thank you for giving us the insights, sharing everything that you do. This is so powerful. For anyone who's listening, who wants to reach out and connect with you, online, and maybe further the conversation, how and where can they find you? Bernie Goldenberg (17:11) Yeah, you can find me, Bernie Goldenberg. It's spelled just how it sounds on LinkedIn. Again, I'm the one that works at Zappi. There might be another Bernie Goldenberg out there. But yeah, feel free. you want to reach out to me directly, I have no problem sharing one of my personal emails, berniegoldenberg.com. Reach out to me. And yeah, happy to continue this conversation with anyone who's curious to learn or just talk more about product marketing, AI, and everything else we talked about. Ben Ard (17:36) Love it. Well, Bernie again, thank you so much for the time today. Bernie Goldenberg (17:39) I appreciate it Ben, it was awesome.