AI -- artificial intelligence -- is seriously buzzy right now, and everybody’s rushing to talk about it. But we actually think it’s a game changer for one of our partners, ON24…and could be for you, too.
Join V2's Aaron Cole and Roger Courville, CSP as they discuss how ON24 is implementing AI and how AI in general is transforming the work of marketers -- particular as it touches down at doing more than generating ideas. Tune in to stay ahead in the evolving landscape of virtual communication, including learning about:
How AI is revolutionizing webinar management and marketing services.
The importance of data in maximizing AI's effectiveness.
Insights into ON24's AI-driven tool, ACE (Analytics and Content Engine).
The role of AI in improving marketing efficiency and effectiveness.
Ways AI can personalize content for different audience segments.
The future potential of AI in automating marketing tasks.
How AI can enhance engagement and interaction during virtual events.
The significance of maintaining data integrity and ownership with AI tools.
Strategies for integrating AI into your marketing workflow to achieve better outcomes.
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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: #ON24 #virtualevents #hybridevents #ai #artificialintelligence #aaroncole #marketingwithwebinars
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Artificial intelligence is seriously buzzy right now. And everybody's rushing to talk about it and tell you how they're using it. But we actually think it's a game changer for you. And interestingly, one of our partners too on 24. So hello and welcome to on 24 and AI technology, what marketers should be thinking about.
My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of thought leader conversations sponsored by the crew here at virtual venues, where you instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with this blue chip crew who can help you achieve excellence and results by helping you focus on something other than the tech and production.
But, uh, today here, we are here to talk about, uh, On 24 and artificial intelligence as a jumping off point for other kind of big conversation stuff around what's going on in the world right now. Welcome back to the stage. Uh, fellow industry old timer who just happens to be the co founder and head cook and cat herder here at V2.
Welcome Aaron.
[00:01:03] Aaron Cole: Hey Roger, it's good to see you again.
[00:01:05] Roger Courville, CSP: Uh, Aaron, just, Uh, just set the table for us. Why do you think this is a big deal?
[00:01:13] Aaron Cole: Great question. Um, so our world, you know, even if you just go outside the world we live in, you know, which is webinars, management services, AI has taken our society by storm.
Um, and it literally is impossible to go anywhere. and not here, or when you go online and use a document or, or an interface or a program, it literally is impossible not to see some interaction or integration or suggestion of utilizing AI to help you be more efficient with your time. It's, uh, at a freakishly large level of, of interest and adoption already, and I think what we're in at maybe 12 months or so, um, as a product and as a service and as an idea that's really started.
Taking root in, uh, in our society. And so, um, if you take that as an idea, that, that kind of larger idea of what AI has done to our society and the potential implications, and then you kind of squish that down into our market. Um, the, the changes are equally impressive and the changes and the challenges and the potential, especially are.
Uh, are all there just like they would be with, with a lot of the other tools around there, uh, in the market today.
[00:02:33] Roger Courville, CSP: So before we get to like even like use cases and places that this is going to drive effectiveness and efficiency and And the various things that you see it affecting Let's just talk about the root right which is the data Right.
Obviously, we've been all about the data for, for a long time because that's why people do webinars. And it's part of what we have, uh, had particular attention to in part because we've gone through, I don't even countless deep security reviews. on behalf of clients who want to vet us, uh, in route to saying, okay, you're a trusted partner.
We can trust you with our data, particularly like in, you know, financial services or healthcare or something like that. Talk about the nature of data, uh, maybe generally, but specifically with regard to AI and maybe how on 24 is handling it.
[00:03:30] Aaron Cole: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you, you, you put the nail on the head there, uh, the head on the nail right there.
And that data is everything, you know, um, data has always been the gold in the hills that, that every marketer is needing to pull out to extract, whether you're doing webinars, you know, any type of thing that you have, um, any type of a marketing type of presence, you're ultimately looking to learn more about your market.
You're looking to learn more about who you're potentially selling to so that you can be better at your job. And so when you throw AI into the picture, um, there's a couple levels of, of what AI potentially does. And I want to get back to that here in a minute, but just from a general basis, from a general kind of viewpoint, AI essentially helps you to become more efficient and, and, uh, and, uh, better finding and helps you to find better ways to use your time essentially.
Um, and so there are kind of like the, the beginning tasks and then there's the higher level functionality of what AI might and, and potentially is headed to that I think are, are, are worth exploring. But All of it. All of it is wrapped around that data kind of analogy. Um, the other thing I wanted to point out too that I think is a good kind of a segue is I wanted to say also that that, um, or clarify that that our discussion here today.
This is not, um, a commercial for on 24. I just want to kind of call that out. We have been in the market long enough and we have been very, uh, fortunate to work and partner with a lot of enterprise level platforms and streaming systems and stuff like that. And so, um, we have a very good kind of vantage point to kind of look and see how things like AI are affecting the market and affecting the world which we live in.
Having said that, I would be the first to say that I'm, I am personally very impressed with what ON24 has rolled out. They do, uh, to my knowledge, they are one of the, uh, very few companies that are really, really leaning into AI from a development and from a potential use case, um, uh, analogy and, and, uh, and design.
And so they're, they're tools that they have rolled out. So they have a tool called ACE, which is analytics and content engine, um, which I know this, uh, a large part of what we can dive in here to today. It's very forward leaning, and I'm not really aware of a lot of other platforms that have similar products already in the market today.
And so. Um, I just want to clarify that, that, you know, we're not, we're not up here, uh, as complete unabashed, uh, you know, cheerleaders for on 24, but it's pretty interesting and worth noting how forward leaning and how much emphasis they have placed on AI as a data manipulation and data, um, uh, integration and improvement kind of a tool.
[00:06:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. In fact, let me, let me jump in there because I think that's, that's a useful distinction, but here's why you as the listener might actually find this a value, right? I mean, at least what we would hope, hope to bring you in terms of value, right? We here at V2 have always kind of prided ourselves on being kind of platform agnostic, right?
And, and, uh, there aren't really any industry analysts in this mature industry. There aren't really any industry analysts that really kind of keep their eye on the market. Right? So when we've got clients on, on 24 and Webex and zoom and, and, uh, teams and, uh, et cetera, et cetera, and everybody's talking about AI.
And yet at the same time, we've seen some cool stuff and on 24 kind of fits a unique niche, um, in that one, they don't have a meeting platform, right? So unlike almost all of those others, where there's, you know, the meeting platform that you do your day to day team meetings on, uh, and then they might also have a webinar or broadcast or, or streaming kind of product, uh, on 24 is uniquely targeting the enterprise marketer.
And, and they do that really, really well. And to Aaron's point, they're forward leaning because everybody's talking about AI, but they've got, they've got some cool stuff cooking and that's what we're, we're here to talk about. Aaron, back to you.
[00:08:03] Aaron Cole: Yep. No, I think you're exactly right. And, um, during our relationship with on 24, it's been fun to watch that, that really strong forward push, you know, and again, to, to beat the dead horse that you just talked about, it really kind of gives you an insight in terms of.
where they think the market is going, but also their continued, um, ability, for lack of a better word, to help dictate where the market is going, just because of the way that they have been able to kind of stay ahead of that parade, so to speak, um, and, and, and kind of push things out that others are kind of watching and learning from, from, from their own side.
Um, and you know, the other thing too that I was going to say too, it's always helped me when I think about AI, when we start trying to get our head wrapped around, you know, how can AI help me, um, or what does it do, or why is it what everybody is talking about? I've always had, um, uh, clarity, um, and it's helped me to think of it that, that AI from a very basic, you know, from a, from a top tier kind of a, I don't know, beginner kind of a level.
The very first things that AI can help you do is essentially help you be more efficient with your time, help you be more, um, uh, efficient with what you've already created. So potentially suggesting ad copy, you know, potentially suggesting topics of webinars, for example, you know, there's a million chat GPT or type programs that are out there that will help you to write copy.
And, you know, 70 percent of the time, it's pretty good. relative, you know, the couple, maybe 20, 30%, you're going to have to come back and manipulate. But from the very basic level, um, helping me as a marketer to be more efficient with my time is really where you, you, you begin to see that first level of what AI potentially can do.
And from that, you can grow up. into, you know, providing some of the stuff I, you know, that getting back to Entwine4's ACE product can do in terms of providing heat maps so that it shows you where the higher levels of engagement were on your, on your webinar, for example. Things like that are very cool. Um, and that inevitably rolls into, you know, however you want to think about a higher level tier of Not only can you be more efficient and smarter with your time, but you might also become better with your time.
So, you know, going back to the idea of having SEO suggest titles or, or, or ad copy, providing better titles that are going to get you better SEO, for example, you know, that, that has that kind of aggregate data where it's that machine learning that is, you know, Um, you know, pulling in not only what you've done, but also has an ability to kind of sniff out what's going to be a better title.
What's a better adjective to use for your title that might get you slightly better SEO? That's a big deal, you know?
[00:10:50] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, and, and actually, that's one of the things that I think On24 has done kind of interestingly. Um, Meaning putting you in control, uh, a little bit of context, right? So, uh, obviously we do, I don't know, hundreds of events every year on, on 24, right?
I mean, they're a, they're a long time valued partner. And so Aaron has insight. from being kind of that insider with regard to that long term relationship directly with on 24. Um, I recently went to a, uh, an, uh, an on 24 event here in Seattle. Um, and had a couple of interesting conversations. The reason I bring it up is because, is because, um, on 24 realizes that one of the key trends in the market right now is, is when and how do I train this on my own data?
Right. How do I maintain integrity of my own data? I mean, I'm, I'm saying this as I'm, I'm kind of an AI geek as Aaron would probably confirm. He's like, shut up already about this stuff. But you know, I'm, I'm a doctoral student and I got like 400 pages of notes and I created my own, uh, my own chat bot so that I could, you know, Ask questions of my own research and I don't want it looking out at the other thing.
So that's one of the trends in the industry. And one of the things I think, uh, on 24 has done really well because they know that when you want to train on your own data or execute against your own data, right? You want. You want it working off of your data as opposed to what's out there on the web. So to be fair, there's times when you want it to go pull in SEO friendly kind of stuff.
And there's times when you want it to look at your own data because it's going to do personalization or make content suggestions based on say a buyer behavior based on data between your webinar system and your CRM or something like that. And you're training it on your own data, which is of course remains your own data.
[00:12:58] Aaron Cole: Right. Yep. And I do think that's, that's actually an interesting point too, that you just said is that, you know, we're probably not going to touch much into the content ownership part of it, but that's another segment. And that's another kind of element that I know. It feels like it's, it's large in the, in our society in terms of who actually owns this.
And it's interesting that, uh, that on 24 has, has, um, taken pains to point out that if you are utilizing their tool, the content that's created. On behalf of your, you know, your data to your point, your content that it's pulling off of is remains your property. And so it's interesting that they've taken pains to even clarify that already at a fairly early standpoint, you know, as, as they rolled this tool out,
[00:13:46] Roger Courville, CSP: right?
Yeah, because they, they, they point out that they use Azure. Microsoft Azure, right? AI does not interact with open AI or other, other models. So that's
[00:14:00] Aaron Cole: the thing too that I think is interesting is, is that, um, so we have another client that, that is a, is a shared partner with, with on 24 that we produce, um, and, and manage their campaign from a professional production level.
Um, and they have, they have unique Well, I wouldn't say unique, but enterprise level requirements, which is legal has to review and approve all content before it even remotely gets to a registration page or a website. And so that's even another layer, you know, so if you have your AI tool generate content, you've got to have an ability to, to provide that to legal in this case, or whoever the body might be, that needs to review stuff, your boss, whatever.
Um, and then potentially need to be able to make edits and changes to that so that. A, ideally it's learning from you from that machine learning kind of a standpoint within your own ecosystem, but also has something that you're not going to get in trouble with. from legal that you can't edit down the road, you know, so, um, that's another element of it too, that, that I've seen, um, at least one of our clients kind of work through and kind of talk through and think through how would that work from their workflow standpoint.
[00:15:09] Roger Courville, CSP: So On24 likes to use these words, intelligent engagement, and I love those words. I don't, I don't think that's trademarked or anything, um, unique to them, but I'm curious what strikes you when it comes to the various ways that this is going to provide you opportunity and benefit. Where does, where did those words intelligent engagement touchdown for you?
Maybe before an event, during an event, after an event. Pick your starting, your starting spot there.
[00:15:43] Aaron Cole: Definitely. And I, I would, I would answer that question and kind of go back and preface that from both kind of different levels of where AI can fit into the picture. Again, you've got that initial level, you've got that higher level, and then to your point, even a third level, uh, that you were just talking about a minute ago, Roger, kind of in that, in that, in that spectrum.
So if we're talking about, um, initially. Providing product or, or efficiencies to your campaign. Let me put it that way. Um, automating your workflow is obviously a very big one to begin with, where, you know, 90 percent of what you're setting up on a webinar platform, you've already done 20 times and, and almost every platform out there does have an ability to clone an event or copy of it or whatever it happens to be.
But that's a very basic kind of higher level function. Again, I think pretty much everybody has that where you're, you're not, uh, having to recreate the development wheel of setting stuff up and putting it together and, you know, setting up your event to look the same as it always has. You can provide that via templates and have that be smarter, um, as a way for you to use your time.
In addition to that, and this is where AI also would start to come in, is that we're going to be talking a lot Um, in this, uh, in this, uh, session today, but even more so, um, market segmentation and, and what that really means is you as a marketer being smarter in ways that you connect with who you're trying to get to your event.
And so just as an example. You know, if you have a wide ranging event and you've got potentially CIOs on the call and you've got IT personnel on the call, it would be really smart to be able to design your system so that it is able to detect what camp either of, you know, all of your registrants come in on and then even potentially dictate and serve up.
relevant content, depending on what side of the spectrum they're on. So if you're an IT person, you're going to get served up content that is very specific and relatable to you as an IT professional, which is completely different than a CIO. It goes back to data again.
[00:17:56] Roger Courville, CSP: I, I, one thing,
I mean, A, B testing on webpages is not a new idea, but sadly, In the world of virtual events, we still haven't really had what you were just talking about, which is, Oh, based on X, Y, or Z. Uh, I detect that you are Y and I'm going to serve up a different wrench page to you or something like that. And I realized that some of this may actually end up being kind of.
Maybe forward leaning, right? We don't, please, if you're listening, uh, don't take every one of these things as something that, uh, that on 24 can do today or, or frankly, anybody, but, but this is where it's going, right? It's kind of like the workflow part that you were talking about, right? Everybody has the ability to copy forward an event, right?
I created this event and now I want to reuse that and maybe even call it a template where, uh, So that I don't have to redo all my branding and all of the stuff that I had already taken time to do. But what about when that intelligent engagement takes it to the next level? And maybe he says, Oh, you scheduled this on, um, you know, September 3rd.
Do you realize that that's a holiday week? Do you, do you want to do that in a holiday week or whatever? Right. And, um, and so the, the, the potentiality for you being better at your job or, or, you know, being smarter is some of that's going to touch down for you as the kind of the program owner. Some of it's going to touch down for us as the producers, right?
If you, because as you get more strategic than knock on wood, maybe you consider, you know, outsourcing the production to a production crew like us. But both, both serve to, to help you be a whole lot more effective and efficient at your job. So, um, there's, there's a thousand of those little things that start to touch in the detail.
[00:19:55] Aaron Cole: That's that first level, right? That's that first level of how do I become smarter and more efficient with my time, but also potentially growing into that where I become better at my job. Better at my job because I'm utilizing a tool or product that has AI integrated in it because I have either better data or more insights, more insightful data that I can act on, or I'm even segmenting that out and being proactively more efficient as I'm looking at nurturing those leads.
That's exactly it. And that's why, again, um, Again, not, not a commercial to On24, but it is impressive that, um, I think that the ability and, uh, you know, the aha, the hallelujah moment, you know, of like, let's just figure out a way to segment our audience. Okay, and I'll program that into my system and I'm going to identify my segments that I know I'm going to hit and I'm therefore going to be able to serve them up different content.
Um, during the event, I can serve up different things for call to actions, depending on who those segments are. It's just, it's just very cool stuff. And, and to continue your question about, um, you know, during, before and after, before, during and after, um, There are other obvious elements of, of providing transcripts even, or, you know, taking your content and flipping it into a bo a blah, a blog, you know, or, or an ebook or something like that.
Just having that automatically be generated. Um, another one that I, that I really love, that I think is very cool, um, is, uh. you know, visually providing a marketer, essentially a heat map of your recording, you know, visually providing you with a heat map that actually visually shows you where the highest levels of integration on your event work.
And that's, Uh, metric via audience engagement. So questions, annotations, chat, you know, things like that all go into that, that algorithm to provide that. So you visually can see where the, where the greatest hits are, but then even taking it one additional level. of having the system automatically create snippets of those heat map points that you can then serve up back to those relative segments of your market.
Not rocket science, it's just really smart. You know, it's just, again, getting back to the helping you be s'more, s'more, more create, more efficient. And effective with your time
[00:22:27] Roger Courville, CSP: and it's all in a cream
[00:22:30] Aaron Cole: and it's all integrated. It's all right.
[00:22:32] Roger Courville, CSP: No, because here's the thing. You just, you just, I mean, you just touched on several things that we could probably riff on for a whole hour and we won't, but let's just take that one, right?
Uh, there's a, I don't even know. I can't even count the number of services that I see now where you can go upload a video and it will smartly detect little extractable moments from this video that you, you know, like we could upload this video and it goes in and identifies 10 different places, 10 different deadlines
[00:23:02] Aaron Cole: if it did at one of ours, but anyways,
[00:23:03] Roger Courville, CSP: go ahead.
Great. And it will go auto extract little videos for the sake of uploading to YouTube. to, um, social media, right? But that's an, you think, just think about the time in your production workflow, right? As opposed to, oh, we just did our webinar in on 24 and it, it auto does it all within that space.
[00:23:26] Aaron Cole: Why not have that be part of the same platform?
[00:23:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Right? And so, um, to me, there's probably two parts. One is an awareness of that kind of thing with regard to you thinking strategically as a marketer going, ah, I'm, you know, Already thinking beyond interviewing Aaron to going, uh, this one hour interview is going to serve some people who like long form content and I don't even have to spend hours and hours and hours in, in, um, right.
Some video editing program trying to extract 30 second snippets of soundbites for social. I'm already ready to go. And to Aaron's point, I'm Uh, because everything's driven now off of a transcripts that now can easily be just easily and automatically done. It's all driven in a way that allows you to go in and make intelligent choices, including to Aaron's point, push a button.
And now we take that transcript and turn it into an ebook. Oh my goodness. Um, you know, everybody's got AI, right? Go to Webex. Everybody's got some, some form of AI going on, but it's a whole lot more than just generating title ideas. It's, it's actually. Um, just going to be transformative with regard to the nature of
[00:24:45] Aaron Cole: the potential
[00:24:45] Roger Courville, CSP: think about strategically how we think about go to market.
[00:24:49] Aaron Cole: Yep. And I think that starts to get into that, that those higher levels of, you know, yes, this is helpful again, to your point, to be official with my time and I could take this and drop my file into Camtasia, blah, blah, blah, and find all that stuff and cut those. But it certainly is helpful to have all of that, again, be a part of a workflow that's already within a single platform.
That higher level of becoming better at my job because of the tools I am using, aka. Artificial intelligence. So getting back to data, thinking through and finding ways that you are potentially lead scoring better, having that data tie into a larger CRM, so that you've got one aggregate source of all of your data, being able to look at, uh, the lifetime relationship cycle of people that are attending your webinars and even have that provide suggestions of content that might be relevant to that specific individual based on their history, based on their consumption.
Again, it's not rocket science and to your point a lot of people have similar things, but um, in our world it's pretty smart to have all of that be available in one ecosystem that you're building out. your inner, your, uh, you know, your marketing design from, you know, and having that all be something that you can then go to your boss or whoever it is, you know, that, or even yourself, when you're looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning and just saying, I am being better at my job.
Because of the tools I am employing and I am using
[00:26:29] Roger Courville, CSP: here was just one of my experiences. So I don't know what it was six weeks ago, two months ago, I went to this, the event here in Seattle and, uh, they, uh, Mark Bornstein says, Hey, here's QR code. where you can get the deck and it was a, it was a killer event, killer food, by the way.
But so I get home and, and I go to the site to get a copy of the deck. This is kind of their personalization at scale. And to me, this is kind of that where, where we begin to see that intersection of synchronous and asynchronous, right? So I actually, I scanned the little QR code to go. To the place where I can grab the copy of the deck.
And when it takes me to a website, there is our virtual venues logo in the upper left hand corner.
[00:27:23] Aaron Cole: Pretty cool.
[00:27:25] Roger Courville, CSP: Pretty cool. And you know, I mean, I'm not 22 and I didn't just get out of college and I'm not didn't just fall off the turn up truck. I've been doing this a long dang time. Yeah. And, and I still had this aha moment was like, oh yeah.
So it wasn't just about the logo in the upper left hand corner because now all of the little content panels down below, because it suggested content in. Not only offered me the deck, but suggested a whole bunch of other content pieces and it made this, and I'm going, ah, and what I'm going to see is different than what Aaron would see is different than what Jessica would see.
And I'm like, Oh, that, that is beautiful. All driven off of data, in a sense, collected. At an event before an event, during the event, after the event, whatever. Right? And I'm like, oh, my friends. That, that is a whole new world of webinars. Right? And and to be fair, that's, that's one of the places they're leading, right?
Because it's not just about, do I have a different way to launch a poll? It's, it's a, it's a whole next level with regard to the nature of how engagement happens.
[00:28:41] Aaron Cole: Right. I think that does speak to that. Um, I, uh, I mentioned this earlier, you know, their, their ability to, to be so forward leaning in the market relative to some of these tools that we've talked about, but in some ways even potentially dictate where the market is focused on by, by some of those abilities, you know, um, That, that become a reference point for some of the other players in the market to try to find a way to execute at least from a, from an operational standpoint, it's potentially extremely powerful, you know, um, there's the other thing I think that's interesting too, is I feel like we've been talking, you know, AI has been a hot topic for what a year and it's already at this just crazy, you know, level and it's completely conceivable and probably possible, probably probable, that a year from now there might very well be other elements and other functionalities, other Things in efficiencies about AI that we're not even really cognizant of yet that that might eventually be rolled out
[00:29:47] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah,
[00:29:47] Aaron Cole: it's a very fast moving train, you know,
[00:29:50] Roger Courville, CSP: well, here's here's one this and to be fair This is probably a little forward leaning if we go back far enough Think about during an event right and how we think about helping your Company or organization engage an audience during the event, uh, because Aaron and I go back so dang far, one of the things that I recall we used to do is go, okay, we should probably have one person backstage to help answer questions for every, I don't know, 50 or 100 people in the audience.
And you're going to have 2000 people in the audience. Therefore, we should have this team of people backstage who can make sure that everybody gets responded to. So they feel engaged and whatever, because there's no way that the speaker is going to answer all those questions. And right there, there's one way.
Then to the best of my recollection, WebEx was the first company. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall, WebEx was the first to embed some form of lead scoring in the registration process where you could then dictate kind of what bubbled up. in the Q and a panel based on some form of lead scoring.
when they registered, right? Oh, so this person is a C level, somebody. So we're going to bubble their questions up to the top or they're in it and we're going to build their questions up to the top, whatever that happened to be. Right. But now you've got this potentiality with AI, where it's not just, okay, we're going to prioritize the C level people or the it people.
We potentially could route those questions with regard to the, with regard to, That individualization or personalization in a way that could take on a whole new form. And I realize that's kind of probably a forward leaning, forward leaning kind of thought. But when you think about personalization at scale, when you think about an engaging two way experience, when you think about the nature of how you engage and nurture people.
before, during and after. Um, I think we're going to see some mind blowing stuff and it's, you know, like you said, it's, this isn't an on 24 commercial. They just happen to be pushing the envelope right now.
[00:32:09] Aaron Cole: Right. Yeah. And we're privileged to be able to see that, you know, and I do think that we stand in a fairly unique position to be able to look at, um, where's on 24 going?
Where is webinar. net going? What's, what's the abilities of, you know, a specific console in relation to, to one of these topics? I think we're both kind of, um, in agreement with the potential, um, Okay. game changing abilities that AI have, you know, and, and again, that, that's nothing new because that mirrors a lot that is going on in our society in general about, you know, job security and all kinds of things, you know, there's a lot of elements there.
Um, when you boil that down to look at our little specific market and our little place in, in, you know, the larger ecosystem, it's very interesting, at least to me, to see, Those similarities in some of those same larger discussions, and then also see ways that it's being applied from a efficiency and a better outcomes type of a standpoint.
You know, and I agree with you. I, I, I am impressed with what on 24 has done. They, well, you know, they recognize that too, you know,
[00:33:18] Roger Courville, CSP: because, because they have the clarity of being hyper-focused on the enterprise marketer. They've, uh, they've talked about certain things that frankly touched down for everybody and here's one example.
First party data, right? Everybody's trying to figure out what's next with the demise of the cookie and what changes Google is making and whatever. And I don't even want to pretend or any of that in that kind of thing. But that's always been one of the beauties of webinars, right? I mean, webinars collect first party information and do so over a life cycle.
I don't just get your registration data. I get other quantitative, quantitative and qualitative data that unfolds over the life cycle of you joining and participating in an event, how you voted in a poll, what you typed into chat and those kinds of things, right? It's always been super powerful. And all webinar platforms have that, but on 24 is talking about it, right?
Because if you go to go to, they got a great little platform, but their primary focus kind of is on their, you know, unified communications platform. Same with Zoom, right? Zoom's not talking about Zoom meetings or Zoom webinars anymore. They're talking about unified communications and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Interestingly, on 24 is actually just taking that on front. And I, I really appreciate that about them.
[00:34:47] Aaron Cole: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think it's, it's, it's interesting to watch that, uh, that maturation, both of the market, but also as a product and just kind of see where that's going. But I would say, you know, to kind of recap, to kind of go all the way back to what you said at the very beginning.
Um, it's all about the data, right? It's all about. me being smarter with my data or helping me put it that way, to be smarter with my data, helping me to be more efficient with my time and how I'm using that data. And then, you know, the aha, the Eureka moment of providing insights and better outcomes with my data.
You know, that that's, that's it right there.
[00:35:29] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, we've spent a lot of time talking about the kinds of places that the use of data touches down with regard to engaging. your market. But there's that whole back end of now how AI is going to help you bubble up those insights and decision support insights a whole lot more quickly because, um, because whether you just let it do its thing or you've integrated it with Power BI or MySQL or whatever.
You know, um, there are a whole bunch of other things, places that that's going to touch down, uh, in a way that probably be very personal to you because depending on what your need and, and what's your systems are. Curious Aaron, as we head toward wrap up here, um, are there any other places that you, that you think we should have touched on that we haven't?
What questions should I have asked you that I haven't asked you?
[00:36:25] Aaron Cole: Well, as usual, I think you've, you've done a, you've done a good job kind of running through it. I do think, um, one thing I think it's worth bringing up, and this is a little bit of the elephant in the room. When you go up and look at all of the discussions that AI is causing in our society, you know, there's that inevitable.
Kind of end result that people are talking about about what AI is and it actually even it's like an extension of what we've been talking about where AI, like what we all talked about is helping you to be smarter and more efficient with your time and ultimately, Ultimately, if you're really looking at this through, there's the potential that that means that that could potentially mean that you need less people on your staff or on your workforce to provide a similar or even potentially a better solution to your marketing needs.
I mean, that's, that's, that's again, that's an underwritten kind of question of where is AI going? Is it going to, you know, take all of the content writer jobs and stuff like that? That's a. totally different topic, but it's related. And I do think that that's where a lot of this will go because when you are a marketing person and you are, you know, in the old days, you are making the justification of hiring a content and a webinar management person, you know, to your, to your staff, those are hard costs.
And you have to make the justification that this is going to provide you With the benefits of, you know, better content, better production, better qualities and stuff like that. It's completely possible, maybe even profitable, probable that at some point AI is going to start rewriting that equation for you because you are able to do more with less, you are able to be more efficient with the crew that you've got, where I also, from a, from a selfish standpoint of V2, um, from a managed services standpoint.
I think we fit the other side of that equation, right? Because if you are talking about needing to be more efficient in your marketing department and all of that, you have that other side of the equation of the actual production elements that are required for you to run your events at the level that your boss or you even want them to be to be conducted at.
And I would argue that the ability of, uh, of. outsourcing to professional production providers, not even us, but just kind of doing that as a, as a, as a, as a practice that also has that ability to provide you with that economy and that scalability, but also the economics of not, incurring the hard costs.
If you're going to save it from the marketing development, it makes sense to also look at saving it from the production elements. And, and I do kind of feel like, you know, again, we'll see where we're at in 12 months from now, but I feel like that's, that's the equation I think that everybody is kind of eventually get to.
[00:39:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I am, I get goosebumps. Even as you say that, in part because, and nobody here would know this, but I spent a lot of time doing competitive analysis, both when I was, working at vendors like Microsoft and independently when I would get hired by GoTo or somebody. And there's this like, there's this very broad range in managed services that I think we're really well positioned for.
And okay, this is going to set. a V2 commercial. At the low end, there's, there's your Fiverr level of hire a virtual assistant for 25 bucks an hour who happens to know how to push a couple buttons on zoom. Okay, great. It doesn't, doesn't take an expert to push a couple buttons on zoom. At the other end, you've got managed services from the vendor.
Some of the vendors themselves who have these massive fortune 500 kind of gadgets. Corporate budgets, right? And so Zoom, Webex, On24, God love them. Uh, they all have pro services, but they're very happy to charge you 250 or 300 bucks an hour for it, right? Because they have that level of corporate overhead.
And then there is an in between where we can provide real value for, uh, with that level of expertise, uh, at, uh, at, at something a whole lot more aggressive and okay. End of Roger commercial. Final words, Aaron.
[00:40:59] Aaron Cole: No, I, how can I not agree with that analysis?
No, but anyways, I mean, um, as always, it's a great, I definitely appreciate these, these conversations, Roger, because it's, it's, it's so fascinating to watch I do. I always, I always feel that we're really privileged to be in the market that we are not only for where and all that's changed over the past couple of years, but, but this again, it's just yet another, another kind of very interesting kind of offshoot of our industry.
And again, who knows where we're going to be. I can tell you where we're going to be though, to your point. I mean, we, we know where our business is. We know what we do. We know the value that we provide to the clients that we, that we provide those values to, and that's not going to change. So we'll always be here.
Um, I love these conversations because I feel like it's a, I learned stuff as much as I think anybody possibly could, you know, so I think it's a great. It's a great use of time. So thank you for, for putting this together. And, uh, it's always fun to talk.
[00:42:00] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, I will say thank you because normally I would say thank you again to our sponsor today, Virtual Venues, but hey, that happened to be Aaron because he, he the boss.
So, uh, thank you again to Virtual Venues where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We will catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.
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