If you’re the marketer who needs to reach a market of owners and sales managers – particularly in a world deep in AI – what do you do? And how might webinars or virtual events help you get there?
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Head of Strategy Roger Courville, CSP connects with Lauren Sawyer, founding Marketing & Partnerships at Siro.ai.
Now this is Lauren's second time on the podcast because she's not only in a new role, but because she has such deep experience with webinars as part of the marketing mix.
As you listen in on the conversation you will learn:
How AI is reshaping the landscape of marketing, including webinars
Strategies for reaching less tech-savvy audiences with virtual events
The importance of using webinars for product-market fit
Tactics for integrating case studies effectively into webinars
How to use breakout rooms to boost webinar engagement and conversion
The value of AI tools like Jasper and Laudable AI in marketing workflows
Techniques to turn webinars into multiple pieces of valuable content
Insights on building an efficient marketing team with operational support
Practical advice on using webinar content for long-term lead nurturing
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #B2B #B2BMarketing #webinars #AI #artificialintellignce
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: If you're the marketer who needs to reach a market of owners and sales managers who might not be that tech savvy, particularly in this big world that's deep in AI, what do you do? And how might webinars or virtual events be part of the mix to get you there? Well, hello and welcome to webinars, uh, webinar marketing in an AI world.
My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations, sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues. where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with a crew that helps you focus on something other than tech and logistics. We're not here to talk about us.
And I'm, I am tickled actually to welcome back to the show, a seriously experienced with webinars, uh, marketer, Lauren Sawyer, community builder and marketing and partnerships at Ciro AI, started a career in broadcast TV, produced, uh, uh, More than 300 webinars since she started doing this a few years ago, now building, uh, as a founding marketer, the marketing webinar program as zero AI from scratch loves to talk about an idea that I, we talked about when we met about a year and a half ago called connection to conversion.
We'll get to all of that. Welcome Lauren. Glad you're back. Tell us a little more about, uh, what you do and how you get started. What your new role is.
[00:01:21] Lauren Sawyer: You got it. Hi Roger. Good to be back. So yeah, you touched on this a little bit, started my career as a broadcast news television producer, did some in house production, got into tech four years ago and over the years since 2016 have produced, I'm pretty sure it's over 300 webinars at this point.
And I'm currently the founding marketer at Ciro AI. So it's a series A. Um, with that record and our app is a recording and coaching tool for field sales teams. So we're, you know, living in the virtual event world, but these are people who are in person knocking on doors and sitting at kitchen tables to sell.
And now how do we use technology to reach a not so technical audience? Um, and then in. Form them of what's going on with ai. So it's definitely been a whole new world, but I love it, especially 'cause, you know, selling B2B SaaS, it kind of feels like we're, you know, selling pixels to each other, but we're really working with people who are getting their hands dirty, doing some real work every day.
So it's, it's definitely been a fun one.
[00:02:30] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I mean, think about even just the business model of those that you're trying to reach, right? I mean, outside salespeople knocking on doors typically required a sales manager to ride along and they can't do that times how many ever visits. Therefore, uh, I think the, the potential upside is huge.
Tell us a little more about, uh, how you even started into the role thinking about the entirety of the marketing mix, even before we talk about webinars.
[00:02:59] Lauren Sawyer: Sure. So, I also love that, like, you already are able to see the potential of what's there, too, um, and that's, that's exactly what we're trying to do, is scale the benefit of a ride along and, and actually even do one better by hearing real examples, not something that's Um, and so how do we market to this very unique group of people who are very busy running their companies and trying to make sure their field team is supported, um, potentially across the country?
And so, um, That has looked like meeting them where they're at, which is a lot of events, so field marketing galore, and then just kind of testing to see like how open are people to virtual. We've had good luck, we'll talk more about that. Um, And then, yeah, I think partnership marketing. I was hired for marketing and partnerships has also been huge because this is an industry where people really look to their peers or other leading organizations for the software they already use to kind of, you know, Light the way and guide them of what they're going to need to be successful.
And so finding those strategic partners and integrating our app and telling our stories together, um, has been really important. So obviously there's a lot of aspects to that. So where do we start? And for me, it was really important to do something I knew, right? If you're doing a new role and you have a lot to learn, give yourself some kind of foothold.
And so for me, like, since I can do webinars in my sleep, that was the answer. And I will tell you it wasn't an immediate success, and I can talk more about why, um, but by webinar two, we were rocking and rolling.
[00:04:56] Roger Courville, CSP: I know from our previous conversation that you had, uh, a unique approach to webinars. And as you just said, as you started this new role, it wasn't as successful and then you learned something going along.
So tell me what you were thinking about when you were coming from the previous role and what you learned along the way with what you're doing now.
[00:05:20] Lauren Sawyer: Mm hmm. So traditionally, I've, I've really used breakout rooms to extend the conversation and allow people to go one step further. Um, bringing in the experts that were the speakers and then also the sales team in case that's where the conversation naturally goes and they need some more context or to set up a meeting.
Um, haven't done that yet. I'm still actually in Zoom webinar world, which I think is kind of funny, because after doing webinars for so, so long, starting out partnering with V2 back in the day, um, we used everything under the sun except Zoom webinars, um, because we were looking for those extra capabilities, like uploading videos and playing them natively, or doing a breakout room, or having, like, great captioning.
Um. But because we're working with a less technical audience, this is not people working in SAS. No one A, really expects it. Um, and so you don't, there's just not a lot of people doing what we're doing. So we're, we're not, you know, So concerned about standing out in that way with the production capabilities.
Um, it's just a matter of like telling people about it in the first place. And then, um, it's, it's also just kind of a budget thing. Like, you know, I started in April and so I inherited the budget I inherited and we already had zoom webinars. So it's like, let's test if this channel works before we, you know, sign the annual agreement for something else.
And. Where it didn't work when I first started was really because we decided to just, like, launch the program in two weeks, which, um, Yeah, I'm saying because you would understand what that implies, and so it I think would have been a little more of a success off the get go, had our partner promoted, but he was double booked for another webinar, so they were promoting that one.
Um, And then what's been really interesting though is like probably like five people showed up live, but we've had over 200 views since we posted the webinar on YouTube. So like the content was still valuable. I don't think it was a waste. Um, and then, you know, we were able to get out in front of those future.
Webinars and, and use a little bit different of strategy for the content as well.
[00:07:55] Roger Courville, CSP: That's a, uh, an interesting statistic with regard to that. You know, one of those early webinars, five people show up live, but now you get a couple of hundred views on, on YouTube. There are some people, uh, obviously since that's what we do is work with people, you know, marketing webinars who actually think of the live event simply as a, As authoring opportunity, and as long as the content is valid, it can sit out there and gather more views nearly in perpetuity.
I'm curious, you have a less technical audience as you, as you shared before. If you had a less technical audience, do you find that their participation in webinars or their paradigm for you, uh, coming is a little more like, listening to a podcast, particularly like people who might be on the go. They're listening, not just sitting there watching.
[00:08:55] Lauren Sawyer: I mean, I don't know a hundred percent because I don't know what's happening on the other side of the screen. Um, but like where we had success right after our first webinar is when we had a very straightforward case study presented of how a leading home improvement organization in the. country used our app and the results that they saw the dollars they earned the performance that increased for their sales reps and how they did it and then also the pitfalls that they would recommend for other managers implementing this and working on the change management because obviously recording every conversation, um, especially for Companies that have not historically used a lot of technology is going to be a big shift.
And then especially a few people there a long time who think they don't need coaching. Um, but we obviously know there's always room for improvement for everybody. And so at first we were a little worried like is this going to be too sales pitchy and that's definitely something I talk about even in interviews when people are like, what's something you've learned?
What's a project that went wrong? And I can tell you that when you do a webinar, that's basically just a demo, but you've pitched it as thought leadership. People will not be happy. You are not going to make sales. Um, even though that's how you traditionally sell, you set the wrong expectation. However, It worked, telling this case study and going through it step by step with the AE who built everything out for the pilot program, our CEO kind of moderating the conversation, and then the key stakeholder at the organization who put everything into place and launched it, um, Because it was focused on education.
Like, yes, it told our story and we looked good, but we also looked good because it really worked. And then we didn't shy away from the things that people could do better. Um, so, so we were setting a groundwork for other people to be successful. Not just saying, here's a thing that we do. And so, yeah, like, I think that was a really good learning that, like, you can talk about your product at length, but it should be in such a way that you're setting up your audience for success and, like, demonstrating how they can really use it as opposed to just, like, walking through a few features.
[00:11:17] Roger Courville, CSP: Interesting that you say that, uh, in, in my corporate marketing career, there was a lot of time when I was responsible for sales materials and product marketing oriented stuff, right? The, the go to market strategy. And one of the top requests of course, is always case studies. And as you know, case studies are hard to get when you're going to go put it in print because now it gets all tangled up in legal and in a whole bunch of stuff, but get them on a webinar and get them just get them talking and you achieve in a sense a similar result.
With a whole lot less headache.
[00:11:52] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah. So we do think of those webinars as a case study interview to an extent. And then also I'll say, um, Oh, I lost my train of thought. We do think of it as a case study interview. Oh, it is helpful to give people the opportunity to be heard on the webinar, to be able to. to have them justify the time to do it.
So like, if you're just saying like, Oh, I want to write a case study about how this all went, and they're busy, an hour of their time is like probably unlikely to get. Um, but if you're giving them the additional visibility for the success that they've had, personally as a manager and for their organization, it starts to become more valuable use of their time.
So it really can become more of a win win when you use a virtual event to tell that story.
[00:12:49] Roger Courville, CSP: In your new role, is there any particular combination of marketing tactics that you use or have found is better, worse, different than before?
[00:13:03] Lauren Sawyer: Also a good question.
Better, worse, different. Um, better is webinars. I've, I've said this before and people are always like, well, why? That webinars work better at CERO than I've ever seen them work at a previous organization. And it kind of blows me away and I explain to my colleagues like, This normally doesn't work this well.
And maybe a little bit about that is because I've done it for so long, but I think a lot of it is because we have a true product market fit. We solve a very big pain point that people have of needing a good efficient way to onboard and train and provide additional support and coaching so their field sales teams can be successful.
And when your team is earning more money, they're going to be happier and you're going to have higher retention. And then obviously your, your company's just going to be more successful. And so like, It's a big aha moment when people are finally introduced to this. It's still very new technology in the space.
Um, but these are still smart business owners who want to be data driven and they want to be efficient. And, As like hard as it is with this economy and everything to run these types of like door to door businesses or home services, every dollar counts. And so if you can pinpoint exactly where you're missing dollars and give that specific coaching instead of just kind of throwing everything against the wall, like what are you missing?
But did you try this or did you try that because you weren't there? Now you have the play by play of what happened. And you can say, that's exactly where this went sideways. Here's how we're going to learn. And you can even then provide examples from the teammates of how they did it. So now you're not just getting feedback, you're getting an example that you could emulate.
So, um, it just works. And so that's been really helpful. I think there's a lot of marketers who can relate to selling something that doesn't. Um, and, and then webinars become part of a longer sales cycle of just like educating people. Um, but if you're, you're really touching on that pain point, it's very possible that that demo is going to get booked straight out of the webinar.
[00:15:21] Roger Courville, CSP: Those. If you're just listening to this, you should probably rewind and just listen to what Lauren just said again. Those are words of wisdom, my friend. Uh, three days ago was my 25 year anniversary in this space. And you know, that means nothing, you know, that four bucks will get you a latte, but observing just very broadly how marketers use webinars.
One of the challenges, um, relative to when I started, which was. a long dang time ago is that it has been viewed as more and more operational and therefore has oftentimes gotten pushed down in the organization to junior marketers who don't think strategically in a way that you just illuminated. Right.
And, uh, you know, I've seen broad level statistics that, um, Where certain, for instance, like response rates, uh, to or attend rates from a registration, right? Register, attend. Broadly speaking, for a long time, it's been roughly a quarter to a third, right? If you're doing better than that, great. If you're doing less than that.
You might want to look more deeply, but in some, some segments, oftentimes I've talked to it oriented companies and they're getting really low response rates, right? Just turning out that, that their little segment is just wanting the on demand, right? And so they're not actually getting that many people to the live event.
But then they get plenty of views and digging in and finding that nuance within your space, perhaps even within your vertical is really important. And the reason I'm just going to point an exclamation point behind that is because it correct me if I'm wrong, but to reflect back what I just heard, you figured out that you've got numbers, people who know where the numbers are because they're the business owner and a sales manager.
And. And number two, they're responding in a way that's very different than how other software as a service marketers might, you know, might, uh, how they might respond to other software as a service kinds of things. And you just figured out a nuance there that, uh, that I think is really powerful. I love that.
Given where you've been, talk to me about building a team. You've been in a couple organizations where, you know, you've seen growth. Talk to me about your experience building out a team, particularly as it either touches down with webinars or more just generally your marketing department.
[00:17:55] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah. So when I was at Vendor, which is procurement software, I was very fortunate to have, a wonderful team around me that had all these specialized roles.
And now it's like, uh, yeah, Lauren, be the glue, figure it all out. Um, and then we have some contractors. And so it was a very common question that came up of like, how are you going to staff around you? Like, are you going to find more people who do what you do to do more of it? Are you going to find people who do something different?
Um, And it's not something I immediately knew how to answer, especially because I hadn't done it before. So I've been at CRO for five months and there, to an extent, is no replacement for just having done a job for a little while. Like, you need some context. Um, so I've like wrapped my head around this and I realize, and I will, Preach this for the rest of my life that like I can't do my job properly without operational support It's not what I do.
It's a very different skill set. It's technology IT Like you said operations over really more communication and content So that is something that's been really important to me is to find top tier operational support so that we're automating things and we can also track the impact of the work. Um, and then from there, I always give this advice that like every marketer should consider networking to be a core part of their job responsibilities.
I don't really care if it's on your job description. Like you need to know the people. Because, like, this is how you find panelists for your presentations, and this is also how you find good help. And so, thankfully, I've been laying groundwork for a very long time of getting to know great marketers, or great marketers who know great marketers.
So, it's, even knowing yourself, Roger, you know, is a great example. And so, like, At that point when needs come up, you can be like, okay, like I know the person who can handle this. So I solve problems in a who not how mentality or method that's actually explained in a book by David Sullivan. I believe it's called Who Not How.
And I was like, Oh yeah, that's me. So when I see a problem, I find the right person to manage it. I don't prescribe the way to do it.
[00:20:22] Roger Courville, CSP: This is a long time ago, but I remember Uh, an aha moment of that exact kind of thing. It wasn't in terms of building a team, but I saw somebody post something on LinkedIn that was a question that I knew somebody else that I knew had solved.
And so in, you know, a sense a who not how kind of way I. I didn't introduce them. That was, uh, it would have been inappropriate in that particular context, but I pinged him because I'd worked with him 10 years previously and said, Hey, back in the day, you implemented this particular software solution. I don't remember who the vendor was.
Who was that? And he not only replied with the vendor, but then said, and I've implemented it at two companies since, and here's two things to think about. So I turned around and sent that back to, to the person asking the question. And, and of course I made, you know, lifelong friends. I mean, that's, we, we helped first.
And, uh, and money just happens, or at least that's my That's my attitude. Um, that, that doesn't mean we don't have to have sales skills and, and close deals, but you know, um, not how I love that. I may have to go read that book. If you were giving advice to someone who maybe has been doing webinars for a long time, but they aren't necessarily getting the results that they want, where would you point them in terms of fine tuning what they're doing?
[00:21:51] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah, so that's really nuanced. Classic marketer answer, it depends. But where I've typically seen things going awry is first and foremost literally in just your confirmation process. So, If you don't have a calendar invite going out to people that's going to drastically affect your conversion of people showing up, there are platforms that even automatically put it on people's calendars.
I've heard very mixed reviews of if people think that's a little too far reaching and some software has removed that capability and then some of it, people think it's extremely, beneficial. Um, but whether or not you want it like an auto ad, you definitely need that calendar feature. And if you don't have that, maybe because you're doing everything in house, um, as opposed to using something a little more robust and automated, um, that's just, it's really gonna hurt your conversion and you need the reminder emails.
They need to go out 24 hours in advance and an hour in advance. And that, also like a starting now email, but that's kind of up to you, how much you want to like ping people. Um, and then I would also say like, get into the content quickly. I always recommend like providing value within the first three minutes, if at all humanly possible.
I've sat through way too many more webinars where like they wait five minutes for people to show up and they do five minutes of introductions and all of a sudden it's been 15 minutes. But, and I haven't learned anything. And that, and people are going to bounce. So people's attention spans are much shorter virtually.
You're literally on webinars to learn something. Like, plan to make sure that people learn something. And so, you know, having really valuable content does matter. There are kind of two different kinds of webinars I think about. Like, the first one is like, This, to me, is almost a shoot the breeze webinar is what I call it of like you can get an expert on and come up with some great nuggets.
But, you know, depending on your goals of like if you really need to sell something as opposed to more so educate, um, you're probably going to need more data, you're probably going to need examples, um, and you really want to think about giving information that's tactical, like that people can really walk away and use or, or they'll probably feel like it wasn't a good way.
So, um, while you can do things a little more on the fly, I don't know if you can hear, like, the cars honking. I do live in New York City, so classic. Um, while you can do things more on the fly, like, You'll obviously reap the benefits of putting in the hard work up front, um, to get the right guests, to know what you're talking about, to have examples to support.
Um, I don't know how this is going to go on, Roger. Can you hear? Okay. We're good. We got him.
[00:24:44] Roger Courville, CSP: It was, I don't know, 12 years ago, it was a long time ago, I did what I think is the only study of its kind. I did this actually was sponsored at the time by, by go to, you know, go to webinar. And I did the only study that I've ever seen of its kind, which is why webinar attendees leave.
And I actually parsed the results kind of identifying something that was like top of funnel thought leadership, kind of an advanced to funnel, middle training, educational oriented, then, and then a third being more like sales demos, et cetera. And plenty of people do show up to sales demos. As you said earlier, If you clearly communicate exactly, you don't know, bait and switch, right?
Don't say this is thought leadership and the do a sale, right? But interestingly, one of the, one of the top reasons, I mean, the top reason is presenters boring or, or content's not more, not as advertised presenter is boring. And one of the top reasons out of the 13 or 15 responses that we looked for was, uh, long winded openings.
Thanks. Right. Hello and welcome to today's webinar. Before we get started, we're going to have housekeeping and blah, blah, right? I mean, we needed that in 2001. We don't need that in 2024. People, uh, people know how, uh, how this stuff works and, or they can figure it out. the platforms themselves are, are conducive to your point about conversion from registration to attendance.
That is a killer point. And you're right. The different platforms handle that differently. Um, two nuances that I like there are, uh, one, uh, some platforms allow you to time instead of just having specific times, like 24 hours in advance, one hour in advance, you can actually go in and define the time. Right.
So like, for instance, if you want to do a webinar on a Monday, which is kind of like television and off hours, um, You know, sending out the reminder email on Friday might be better than sending it out on Sunday, just up to you. True. But another one is, depending on your lead time, is to edit the confirmation emails so that it reiterates what it's about and the benefit of attending live, right?
So it's not just a, Hey, you gotta, you registered for this webinar tomorrow. Yeah, but I registered three weeks ago and I don't even remember what it is. Now my calendar's full in a way that it wasn't three weeks ago. So.
[00:27:17] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah, definitely keep telling people why they should show up live for sure. That's part of why I used to do the breakouts is like that's an opportunity you only get if you show up live.
[00:27:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Talk about that again. I realized your previous role, but I want you to, if you're listening to this right here and now, I want you to hear what Lauren's got to say.
Lauren had this totally unique way of doing marketing webinars and I'm going to, I'm going to bet. 99 percent of anybody here has never seen a marketing webinar that uses a breakout room, right? Training? Yes. Marketing? No. Tell us a little more about how you used breakout rooms in marketing webinars.
[00:28:00] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah, for sure.
So, um, there is like a touch of housekeeping that goes into that of letting people know that's happening at the end. Um, it's part of the promotion for the webinar to let people know they'll have the opportunity to speak with the thought leaders, um, live. And so really what I would do is like, if you have a product demo, you show that kind of at a high level to get people excited.
And then the breakout session would be. having a product expert that can show individual use cases. So if someone really wants to dig in there and see what's specific to them, then we can keep going through that. Um, but what I show live for product demos is always pre produced. I don't believe in like, Getting into your product live because you just leave yourself open to maybe accidentally showing, um, customer information or something's loading slowly.
And that could even be because your internet connection is like a little wonky, but you don't want to represent your product poorly, um, when you have everybody there excited. So really kind of having that more in depth conversation that makes sense one on one. And then also on the other side, if you're doing more of a thought leadership, like in your CEO agrees to be on this webinar, when else can your prospects and customers get FaceTime with your CEO?
It's probably going to be for that 10 minutes that they hang out in the breakout room. Um, but speaking of timing, like what I would do is I would run 30 to possibly 40 minutes of content. Um, and then we would transition to breakout rooms 20, was a, minutes was usually a little too short. 25 minutes is a sweet spot.
30 minutes is usually a little long. Um, and you can kind of run over, like I would say that the presentation is officially over before hopping into those breakouts, give a little bit of information of how to hop over. Um, and then also like you typically are only going to see a handful of people converting over to be on camera.
People aren't always ready to be on camera when they're joining webinars. But what's really helpful, again, from a conversion standpoint is, you know, those are your hottest, your warmest leads of people who really want to know more. And then you ask your sales team to join those conversations, even if it's for just the back half of your webinar.
And then if someone's ready to book a demo, all of a sudden, like we said, they're nice and warmed up. you're all of a sudden solving a need instead of reaching out to them cold saying, Hey, can I get time on your calendar? So it really creates a much better experience for people who are interested in learning more and potentially buying your product.
[00:30:30] Roger Courville, CSP: As we bring things in here toward a close, just a quick Two or three final questions. One is what role do you see AI playing in webinars, whether that's content or production, or maybe it's what you're doing now or where you see things are going just because you have so much experience in both AI and webinars.
[00:30:52] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah, so I think it plays when you're talking about webinars and AI, you also have to talk about video content in general. And almost all, if not all, algorithms are now optimized for vertical video. Um, LinkedIn even just updated their algorithm. So you've got Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, LinkedIn, probably something like a Reel, I don't know what they're calling it.
You've got TikTok. Um, So, where are you getting all this content from? Doing it one off is like, super inefficient. And so, I recently recorded a webinar that was an hour long, and I'm trying to do some quick mental math, and I, I got at least four clips, if not like six, vertical videos out of that. We added captions and we added graphics and we're able to tag partners in that of our speakers and we're able to have content ready to go to explain our product.
And it also just comes off more conversationally because it's now been part of a conversation as opposed to saying, okay, we're hitting record and go. And so, uh, It becomes such a useful content production tool if you really think about the post production, and that's hard to do. Like, we're, you know, it's always kind of, hit, stop, thank you, next.
Like, we have to move on to our next big thing we're working on. But it's so important to continue to get the value out of that. It's just like even when you post something on social media and, Certainly not all of your followers see it based on how the algorithm works, and so you absolutely can post things to say, come to the live.
You can absolutely post. Here's the full recording to register and download. Here are little clips like keep going. People probably are not getting annoyed. They probably haven't already seen this content unless they're like super fans who are glued to your content. Um, and I don't know if I have those yet.
So, gotta keep going.
[00:32:57] Roger Courville, CSP: I don't know if any of us have that. Uh, maybe it's Jordan.
[00:33:01] Lauren Sawyer: And I'll point out, I've been fascinated to see, See that gold cast started out as a webinar software and they've now really rebranded to being more of even a content studio because they added AI capabilities for repurposing your clips.
And so like they are even seeing and getting ahead of this trend of like, okay, how do we efficiently create video content?
[00:33:26] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Um, you know, you can string together a whole bunch of AI tools in. Uh, in your marketing stack or, or your particular workflow, it'll be interesting to see those converge, uh, on 24, is now doing the similar kind of thing where they will, um, with a button push, grab video snippets, uh, or highlights, I think they call them, uh, publish an ebook from the transcript.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, beginning to all be within one platform as opposed to you needing to grab a bunch of different platforms.
[00:34:06] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah. And that's what you should look for. Like I consider that standard at this point, this technology is here, like people need to evolve and include that because it matters.
Like why would I download an hour long video to edit it in Premiere and then have to upload it back to the internet when I could just do it all natively on the internet?
[00:34:25] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. Yeah. The, uh, the production time is, uh, Reduced by a massive factor. Um, not just a little bit, a massive factor. Just next to last question, uh, for companies that you think might be hesitant to invest in AI, how can they think about the ROI of implementing AI tools in their marketing stack?
[00:34:50] Lauren Sawyer: Okay. Here's another, it depends answer, but like you have to think about where you need efficiency. So for me and webinars. I use Jasper AI to create a custom workflow that I could put in like an overview of what the webinar was going to be about. It would give me different options for a title, different options for description, and then once I confirmed that, it would spit out like a LinkedIn post and email copy.
And yes, like, I needed to edit it, but it was so much faster to have something to start with, and I'm a little bit better of an editor than a copywriter anyway. Um, and then like, yeah, the production tools, like I've heard so many people be like, Why do we need to hire a video editor anymore, Lauren? Can't AI just do this?
And it's like, okay, it is. Grants you efficiency, but it is not a magic wand. Someone's still putting it in there, verifying it sounds ok, setting up, you know, what things are supposed to look like from a brand perspective, so you're gaining efficiency, but it's not replacing anyone's work. And so I think you should to kind of look at like what is your pain point and then find the right tool.
[00:36:01] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I mean, obviously in this space, particularly since I spent a lot of time working with trainers, ROI was a a a common question and I'm like, look, you can isolate, measure and monetize anything. The question is, are you gonna, it takes a certain amount of time if you're gonna isolate, oh, how much time?
is that part of my workflow taking now? How do I measure it? And med do a before and an after, and then calculate the, you know, fully burdened labor hour or whatever you're going to do. But to your point, if you can identify that the people that are actually doing the work and tell you whether or not they're more efficient or not.
And I'm at the point about not replacing humans because I've yet to have any AI tool. kick out work that didn't need me to massage it. I even uploaded all of my books, papers, et cetera, into a custom chat bot. And I, I still cannot get it to, to spit something out in what I would count as my voice, right?
My own voice. And so I'm like, okay, well there's my brand standard and I can't get it to do it yet. Maybe that's me. Maybe it's the tool, but we'll get there. You mentioned, was it Goalcast? Was the tool that's kind of evolving there? Yes. Any other tools? You mentioned Goalcast, you mentioned Jasper AI, which is a great tool.
Any other particular ones you really like?
[00:37:34] Lauren Sawyer: Yeah, Zettel's really been on my radar recently and very interesting to me because they're bridging in person and virtual events with really, really robust registration features that are like on par with Cvent, if not in some cases better. So I think that is a really good one to look into.
They've been a little quiet about their advancements they've made lately while they're beta testing it to make sure it like really, really works, which I admire. Not just selling it because you can. So I think that's a really good one to look out for. Um, and then like transcription tools, always nice to have.
Oh, a big one that I've been loving is Laudable AI. And so what you do is I even take like a webinar and I pop it in there and it pulls out quotes for me that you know, speak to customer testimonials and you can kind of tell it what types of quotes you want. So to look for keywords, it makes sure that it's pulling quotes from people who are not from your team.
They're like actually the customers. And it also has some backend coding to make sure it's not hallucinating, which I recently learned is when, you know, AI makes up information. So you have to watch out for that. So, it's helping the data stay true to what was actually said. And so, that has been a really, really useful tool for me as well.
[00:38:55] Roger Courville, CSP: Lauren, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, uh, what's the best way to do that?
[00:39:00] Lauren Sawyer: I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Maybe a little too much. Lauren Sawyer. There's a little sunshine after my name, so that's me.
[00:39:08] Roger Courville, CSP: That's awesome. Uh, final question. Are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:39:15] Lauren Sawyer: That is an interesting question. Um,
it's been a good conversation, Roger.
[00:39:24] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, well, it has. And I seriously, seriously, I'm thankful for you coming in and just, you know, sharing a little bit of your time and dropping a whole ton of wisdom nuggets. So, um. Thank you again, Ciro, S I, if you're just listening, S I R O. A I Lauren Sawyer on LinkedIn and or, um, to the next webinar coming soon.
All right. Thank you again to Lauren and thank you again to our sponsor virtual venues, uh, com, uh, where you can get your, uh, virtual event team scaled up really fast. Thank you again. Uh, we'll see you on the next episode of thought leader conversations.
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