Ashish Malpani on Why Perspective Matters More Than Precision

Overview:

Ashish Malpani joins us for a deep dive into the practical realities of AI-native product marketing. Malpani argues that AI’s greatest value to marketing isn't just automated content generation, but its ability to separate market signals from noise, adapt go-to-market strategies dynamically, and streamline complex workflows. While AI expands what marketing teams can execute—from hyper-personalized outreach to real-time message updates—both Guard and Malpani emphasize that human subject-matter expertise remains essential to maintain brand differentiation, prevent "AI slop," and drive authentic customer trust.

Transcript:

Kerry Guard  0:09  

Hello, I'm Kerry Guard, and welcome to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. Thank you for joining me today. I'm so sorry I do not have my co-host with me, little Miss Elizabeth, but you got me. You got me, and I'm so grateful you're here, and what a wonderful conversation I'm having! I've had, and I get to share with you. It's just a warm conversation. The person who joined me just is so calm and intentional, and it just comes through in such an a thoughtful way that it just it's just so warm. That's just the word I'm going to latch onto for this, and I'm so excited to share it with you. Ashish Malpani joins me. He is the head of global product marketing for DX. A little bit about Ashish before I tell you about the show. He is a product marketing leader with 15-plus years of accomplishments in leading product teams to design and launch solutions that have been used by Fortune 500 customers and millions of end users worldwide. As an experienced product marketer with a background in developing buyer persona-specific messaging, competitive analysis, developing and delivering sales training, producing sales tools, collateral for products and delivering product launch plans and budgets, effective business leader managing strategic relationships and business development efforts and key strategic alliances, academic learning from top 15 schools: Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin. Something that I think is so fascinating with Ashish and some of the other product marketers I've had on had on also Sadie Hawk is a wonderful conversation if you're interested in product marketing, as well as a few other folks, which I'll link in the show notes. But marketers who are more focused on demand gen and go to market strategies are not necessarily thinking about the product function and how the product can also fuel marketing, and so product marketers tend to think about the product first. Even more so, even more so, product marketers tend to think about the customer first, how the product is going to help the customer, and then how you bring that to market, and that's really what she shows up and walks me through today, and how content can really be at the the engine of marketing when it is done with the customer voice intentionality. It's so good. Like I said, it's such a warm conversation. So go grab a cup of tea. Go grab a cup of tea. Pop on your headphones and take a listen. Today I am super excited for our conversation because I am having a blast in the past. Join us on this episode. Ashish was on our show. Oh, I think it was almost two years ago where we talked about product marketing, and he's coming back to give us an update on how life has been going, what he's been up to, and where he's looking to go next. I'm your host, Kerry Guard, CEO and co-founder of MKG Marketing, where we help B2B tech brands get found across SEO and digital ads, and we keep getting rehired. It's pretty magical. It's happening right now, where our clients are expanding and they're bringing us on to do more. And it's just, ah, I-I'm just so in awe of my team and the great work that they do. And this is just such a testament when clients really trust us to just keep on going. It's-it's pretty magical. So that's what we got going on. Real quick about Ashish. If you didn't join in our last episode, Ashish Malpani is head of product and alliances marketing at Corelight. He's a 24-year tech veteran who's done the hard version of this work, migrating 10s of 1000s of legacy enterprise customers in two quarters at Dell, unifying 10 distinct cybersecurity product lines across under one human narrative and building alliance ecosystems with names like Lexmark, Xerox, and Schneider, and lately he's been building AI narrative and AI-native product marketing from the inside, which is exactly the conversation our industry needs right now. Ashish, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show.

Ashish Malpani  4:21  

Yeah, super excited to hear, good to kind of chat again. I mean, it's an exciting time for us as marketers today. Where I mean, AI has been impacting everything, and it's definitely has impacted marketing too. I mean, we've seen AI being used in our technology stack to AI being used for content creation, but I think it needs to go beyond that, and that's what I mean. You know, I've seen how kind of the AI native marketing or even product marketing being evolve as a discipline going forward.

Kerry Guard  5:02  

Yeah, it's interesting right now. There's so much now. There are CBP people here. Everybody's good with AI. You use AI to write your content, and all is hunky dory. We don't care how the content gets made. We just care that it exists. And there's the other camp who is the purest of like, there's lots of things AI can do, and writing content is not one of them. Please stop. And actually, LinkedIn just saw this today. LinkedIn created a button that says "Looks like AI Slop. So now you can actually, I guess, let LinkedIn know what you think is AI  and not. So that was that's very interesting. So yes, it does seem to be the time, and there's definitely these two camps. So what camp do you fall in, Ashish? Do you feel like you can use um you can use AI to you know write content? Do you feel like you need to not do that? What's sort of your POV.

Ashish Malpani  6:02  

So I think we need to take a step back and see again. You know, AI is a useful kind of AI is useful across our workflow. I mean, whether you are a fear marketer, whether you are a growth marketer, whether you are a product marketer, AI can be used in variety of different ways, and you have to decide like what is best for your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? How effective you are today in order to reach them, and how is AI going to help you improve your existing workflows? I mean, ultimately, that's what the conversation needs to happen, right? From crafting a new websites or setting up, let's say, campaign websites, to all the way to creating content, AI can be used in variety of different ways. And I personally believe that when you look at content creation, is one angle, but you know that's kind of the end product that you see, but there are other things that definitely impact and your day-to-day workflow in terms of how AI can be leveraged effectively. So I will start with an example. Right? Again, you know there is a lot of this narrative around AI-native marketing, AI-native product marketing. What does it really mean today? If you think about it, there is a lot of stuff being created and a lot of stuff being created with AI, and there is a lot of noise. I mean, that has created a lot of noise in the in the market. So when you look at your target audience, who you are trying to reach, they are you know, and we are all right faced with bunch of stuff coming at us that some of it's relevant, some of it's interesting, and most of it isn't right. So how do you, what I call a signal separating signal from the noise, and then ultimately, what is a signal? Signal is something that shows, okay, here is the fundamental shift that is happening. Here are things that are changing for your target audience. Here is what your competition is doing, and you have to understand that signal and adapt to that signal because gone are the days where you could set like, oh, I'm going to do an yearly go-to-market plan and then act on it for the rest of the year. Or you know, here are the campaigns that I want to decide for rest of the year and execute on them. I mean, that's no longer true because things have changed. I mean, stuff happens. You have to respond to that, and marketing's role has also changed. Right? I mean, we are increasingly marketing is being looked at as a growth-driving engine, I mean, not just you know demand gen and you know NQL creation engine or content you know beautifying your text. That's not the role that we are in. You know, ultimately we are responsible for customer acquisition to keeping customer happy through kind of a constant education as well as you know really driving customer satisfaction as a process. So I believe you know, when we look at AI native marketing, let's the step one for me is separating signal from the noise and really understanding what is the signal, what's it telling us? Does it impact how our buyers are going to behave? Right? Are their priorities changing? Are their pain points changing? I mean, and I come from cybersecurity background, so I would give you an example where Anthropic released a new model, or even OpenAI is in a model that escaped and started attacking other companies, right? So things like that are kind of a new norm, going to be new norm where people are going to leverage AI for good things and bad things, right? So that when that happens, priorities are going to change overnight. So when Anthropic released this new model. Called Claude, sorry Methus. This model kind of shrunk the window of opportunity for exploitation of vulnerability from now days to really hours, and it found like vulnerabilities that existed in software products for decades. I mean, things that people have didn't realize that you know they were there. So what does that tell you? Is as security leaders who are trying to minimize the risk, they have to be ready for it, and that became a priority overnight. So marketing had to respond to this, right?

Ashish Malpani  10:35  

I mean, really, if you now look at every security vendor, they are talking about Mythos. I mean, that is post-Mythos, Mythos model. I mean, that's the narrative that exists today. But what that really meant from marketing perspective was recognizing this signal, understanding that this is going to impact your buyers' priorities and how they are viewing evolution of their security programs, and then addressing that effective, driving thought leadership around it, driving content creation around it, and making sure that you are actually connecting with their concerns. And they are also while they are trying to figure out what does this mean for them. So we are increasingly going to see that you know leveraging AI to drive signal as a step number one.

Kerry Guard  11:26  

I totally love signal versus noise because oh my gosh, there's so much noise. And Mythos is an interesting example, and the fact that it was a really big signal. Could you give us an example of noise? Like where? What should we be blocking out right now? That's really loud and maybe not something we should be paying attention to.

Ashish Malpani  11:49  

I mean, there is a lot of noise. I mean, you know, you can see that there's you know, if you look at cybersecurity industry, like ransomware is a you know top priority for people, but it also help. I mean, it has also created a lot of noise. Every vendor has created their own ransomware narrative, and I'm if I'm a security leader, I see this and like okay, you know, I hear different perspectives, different point of views from all these vendors, and I am kind of now on a receiving end trying to figure out what is good for me, and nobody's telling me that story, right? So, and the same thing is applicable in every industry. You look at somebody in kind of finance sector. Now, I am trying to figure out as a, you know, as a leader, I'm trying to figure out how to optimize my operations. How to kind of leverage AI, but then at the same time, people are you know going rogue and doing their own AI things. They are trying to experiment with things on their own, and that really impacts my business. So I am trying to lock down things, and that becomes a narrative for me that did not exist six months ago or a year ago, so there is a lot of noise that's been created by people leveraging kind of AI tools to create something that's that they believe is going to solve or do a bad deal in the short term, fix because that's what it is. Right? People are just being responsive to whatever they are seeing in the market, and kind of mistake me taking that as a signal, creating something that's kind doesn't hit the mark, and really kind of missing the opportunity to reach out at their buyers effectively.

Kerry Guard  13:42  

Yeah, there seems to be a clear difference between a signal versus a noise in regards to how many people are like. I feel like people sort of attach like immediately jump on a bandwagon and then go after it, and then it fizzles out and wasn't really anything we should have cared about. How are you distinguishing between these things in regards to like, like, mythos was a big deal because and it came on fast. I feel like it's died down a little bit now, especially with Fable having come out in some other some of these other models. But I feel like the news, if we're attaching our campaigns and what we're trying to stay to the market in line with what's happening in the market and the sort of news cycle, if you will, it feels like that's a lot of quick turnaround in terms of how what we need to be creating, what we need to be saying. Is that what we should? Is that how we should be aligning to creating content and and being thought leaders? I mean, that feels that honestly, that feels kind of tiring.

Ashish Malpani  14:43  

Yeah, it is. I mean, think about this. Right where, yes, you have. I mean, there are certain things that are going to be true across every business. I mean, the way what the problems that you're solving are not. I mean, are fundamentally not going to change. I mean, let's say you solve. Let's say you do like video analytics, for example, and you or do sales enablement too, right? Where you are kind of educating the sellers in terms of how to be more effective in doing the job. Now, this is a problem that's the fundamental problem that you're solving because there.. gaps exist in the existing enablement infrastructure, and if you are that vendor, but yes, there are going to be things that are going to happen. Somebody says, "Oh, you know, there. As a seller, you only get six minutes to make an impression. One of the sellers came out recently that said you only get six minutes to make an impact on your buyer. So, are you going to tailor your message to that. I mean, it seems premature, but again, I mean, this is where human expertise needs to come in and really understand what is noise versus what is signal, right? And yes, I mean some of this may feel like a lot of extra work, but this is where AI native marketing really comes in, right? I mean, once you identify what is the signal versus noise, understand that signal, then realize what is the impact of that signal. Are your buyers' priorities changing and their pain points changing? Are you know is there buying criteria that's getting impacted? And more and more buyers are doing their journeys, or majority of their buying journeys offline. They are doing research on their own. I mean, leveraging AI tools on their own. And then, lastly, when you look at kind of buyers are not kind of there is no singular buyer anymore. Every decision is done by buying committee, and it includes finance to legal to security. It doesn't matter what product you sell. There are multiple business functions are involved in that buying decision. So now, as marketers, now it becomes your responsibility to kind of reach out to these audiences effectively, give them this you know your point of view, and make them understand why your product has a differentiated offering. And so, you know, once you kind of separate and get the signal, understand what the impact of the signal is, then you have to look at how does this, you know, what needs to change in our in your existing campaigns, in your existing content in your existing outreach for us-I mean, for you to be kind of responding to whatever is top of mind for your buyers in that quarter, in that six-month time frame-and I think

Kerry Guard  17:35  

Are you talking?

Ashish Malpani  17:36  

Yeah,

Kerry Guard  17:37  

Are these like tweaks and iterations in terms of just sort of swapping your, keeping your messaging core to who you are and what you do, but then just layering in this nuance of what's happening in the market? It feels like it could either be really subtle. I don't feel like you're saying you should do a complete rewrite. Am I picking up on that?

Ashish Malpani  17:57  

Exactly right. So when going back to the Mythos example, right? Mythos came in. I mean, your fundamental message won't change, but ultimate now you're kind of tasked with figuring out what is your point of view on around Mythos. You know, what does it? How do you want to change your approach? I mean, does your BDR sequence need to change? Does your email outreach need to change? Does it? I mean, do the content that you already have in the market? Do they have to be updated to incorporate the meter? And if the answer, for example, in this case, yes, but I mean, it may be kind of maybe or yes in other cases. But that decision needs to be a human decision, and then you look at that and kind of drive that downstream, and so that your message, your content, your outreach is updated. And it may seem like a lot of work, but this is where I think leveraging AI effectively and having that kind of as your native marketing capability definitely helps.

Kerry Guard  19:04  

So, where does AI come in then, in terms of along this track of reading the signal, understanding how it impacts your audience, to then getting in into market? Is it every step of the way? What? How does AI help make take sort of the load off.

Ashish Malpani  19:22  

Yeah, so I categorize it in kind of four buckets. Right, one is really AI helping you capture the signal. Now you look at what does that mean. I mean, you look at your market analysis. You're looking at your win loss. You're looking at your kind of Industry analysis and competitor moves, and then ultimately, what's you know is there a narrative on from a community perspective? I mean, this is where kind of collecting that signal, analyzing it, and then kind of understanding the impact. This is where AI can help. The next step is a judgment kind of. You know, this is where you, as humans, have to understand. Okay, what is the part of you? Does our position needs to be updated? Does the prioritization needs to be updated? And if the answer is yes, then you can use AI for production ended, right? I mean, this is where you can have agents and skills and content creation and personalization and really kind of looking at your buyer's committee. You know, see, okay, does this need to be updated for my economic buyer, my kind of somebody who's actually having an influence on the decision, but not an economic buyer. I mean, your buyer committee and how you're going to tailor that message, and then ultimately measuring the impact of your efforts. And AI can help you there as well, right? Really understand if the share of voice is changing. Is the pipeline getting impacted by your kind of change in the messaging, change in the outreach? Are the win rates getting impacted?

Kerry Guard  21:10  

It sounds like you're giving AI a lot of first-party data in terms of helping it read the signal, in terms of understanding the impact on the campaign, and it sounds like if it does have first-party data, then having it write messaging to tailor to each individual audience can be can work and be helpful. Am I picking up on that?

Ashish Malpani  21:39  

Yeah, I would, I mean, it's not without human oversight. I mean, this is where human expertise comes in, right? I mean, yes, AI can create. Like I, I mean, but I definitely see the point of view being crafted by humans as marketers. We can say that okay, this is the core or evolution of our message. This is the evolution of our outreach, and then now figure out how you how we can incorporate it in all these assets that are there, all these kind of messages and emails and all of the kind of campaign pages that are already out there. So I think the core has to be still driven by humans, but at the same time, I mean, AI can help kind of the downstream process.

Kerry Guard  22:25  

It sounds like it can help us get more personalized too. I feel like that's been something we've been chasing for so long, but it's been so manual that people sort of avoided it. But now with AI, I've been hearing more and more about how folks, especially from like a cold outreach. I'm not usually a big fan of cold outreach, but I do think if it's really tailored to the person, to what they're doing, and to the pain that they're feeling, it. I mean, I never in my life have I bought something from cold outreach until one day something showed up in my inbox at the exact right time to say, "This is what we do, and this is how we solve it. And let me know if you're interested. And I was like, actually, I just picked a better time. So yeah.

Ashish Malpani  23:08  

I I definitely see that, right? I mean, the research being tailored. I mean, and the outcome being tailored to you. I mean, I'll give you an example. There's somebody I got an email the other day that was talking about a fictional fiction I wrote years ago, and so definitely caught my eye. And then I, you know, I took the efforts to read the email, and I actually responded to them saying, "Hey, you know, I'm not. This is not a good time. And I, but I mean, I'm, I'm happy that you actually spent some time doing research and created something that's tailored. I mean, even though you may you've used AI for most of it, I mean, it is definitely shows how you know AI can help you reach the audience and you know improve, let's say, your open rates, improve your awareness, and that's definitely you know will become more and more important going forward.

Kerry Guard  24:08  

An interesting conversation last night at our monthly meetup, where we talked about you mentioned campaigns a couple times, and one of the gals that that joined us talked about how she felt like demand generation because she's a demand marketer was really shifting under her feet in regards to how campaigns worked, and she was saying that there needs to be an always on component, which I think there always needed to be, but even more so now, more than ever, there needs to be that always on component, and then she's actually moving campaigns to more of an ABX motion, which I feel like is what you're sort of talking about in regards to personalization and being in tune to the market. So I think both are true, but I feel like having only campaigns is definitely not something that works anymore. And needing that always on, but I can start to see, especially the way you're talking about AI native, how these things can now start to work together. Is that, something you're seeing?

Ashish Malpani  25:08  

Yeah I think ABX is going to be your key to kind of getting more qualified kind of inquiries, and I think we kind of went from heavy into physical events to kind of completely digital, back to kind of physical, right? So what does again? I don't think there is any middle ground. You're going to constantly have to figure out what works for you, what works for your target audience and your business, but at the same time, even during physical events, right? What is the audience going to leave that event, and after talking to you, right? I mean, you still have to. I think you still have to create something that's personalized for them to take homework. That way they will remember you and not you know five other vendors who are kind of doing the same thing. So you know from there to really getting something that's doesn't look come across as creepy and you know really kind of sort of having exhibiting a stalker behavior, but still you know, showing that there is a personalization that's tailored to you, and it may not be the right time. I mean, you know, I've in fact, I worked with a vendor who I connected with like three, four years ago, and I, you know, at that time didn't. But when I needed and wanted that, because they left such a good impression that I, in fact, that they were the first ones I call when the need arrives. So, you know, things may change, things will shift, but ultimately, you know, now you're playing in the long long game. I mean, you're no longer just you know, campaign outreach didn't work. You know, quit. Your nurture game needs to be even longer, and you know, continue to be personalized. And this is where I think having AI and AI-native tools in your kind of marketing stack is going to help in some of the things that people are doing. Right? I mean, even when you, you know, once now the websites understand who you are in a way because you know based on cookies that they're tracking based on your past behavior, and in some cases the websites are in fact offering you a tailored experience because you know, let's say I am looking bear shopper Loan, and you know, based on my behavior, the website knows probably like okay, I'm if I'm a first-time buyer, I'm trying to buy something, or trying to buy a new car, or trying to get a new kerry card, and that becomes their primary message based on their understanding. And I think this technology has been like experimental so far, but personalization has gone to that level where your digital experience gets tailored to you. And now with AI, I mean, yes, you are starting with a chatbot and saying, "Okay, give me top five in this. So, or you know, vendors that I want to reach out to and you know as marketers, our job has changed to be the top five choices that AI spits out all the way to kind of you know once the customer acquisition happens, kind of continue the effort in terms of retention and making sure that the customer is there for the longer term.

Kerry Guard  28:40  

Marketing should never stop. This is true. This is true. This is really interesting in terms of the personalization piece of not being creepy. I agree with you there. One of the things you mentioned in that was when you were talking about being at events and sounding like everybody else, I feel like AI is definitely making that easier. I even got caught in the trap myself when I was doing my own positioning and messaging about a year ago, and I was really heavily-I had never really done positioning and messaging, and so I was relying heavily on AI to help me do this. And then all of a sudden, I looked up, and like all of us as agencies were saying the same thing of like we're an operating system and we do this this this this. It's like oh my gosh, everybody's saying this. And so in terms of I feel like in the way that AI operates in helping you be the answer in terms of when somebody's searching for a solution and making sure that you're the recommendation, it's so important these days that you do not sound like everyone else. So, how are you balancing AI? You know, you mentioned human in the loop, which I think is important, but how are you balancing that AI nativeness with ensuring that? What you are saying is unique to who you are as a company because if you just sound like everybody else, you'll just be a footnote, you'll be a citation, and you won't be the recommendation.

Ashish Malpani  30:10  

I think this is where, as marketers, I don't think we need to worry about our job safety, right? Because this is where Expertise would come that, and I think yes, companies are making that pivot and going AI all the way, and it's gonna. I mean, I think at some point there will be a blowback. I mean, already you're seeing you know like AI swap being caught out, and people are kind of tuning away from the content that they believe is AI created, and so I think this is where having the right experts, subject matter experts in your marketing is gonna have a definitely change the game. You have to figure out like, okay, what is when a new new new signal emerges. What is your point of view for that signal? How is it different? And let's say your five vendors are saying the same thing. Then you know you have to have something differentiated, and this is where you know working closely with your kind of product teams, working closely with your product marketing. You know, this is where things need to kind of constantly update, so that you can separate yourself from the noise. And I don't think you know the right now. Everything seems to be like, oh, you know, we need less marketers because you know you have AI tools that can do that effectively, and one person doing everything, and but ultimately, when you look at the output, you still question: Yes, the workflow is getting streamlined, the kind of production timelines are getting squeezed, but is the quality there? I mean, is you know, do you see from graphics being created to the content that's being generated to the messaging that's there to Avin is that repetitive? Is that same across the industry? And the latter is increasingly becoming true. So yes, there is a human intervention that's needed that is kind of definitely room for us as marketers to figure out what is going to work best for our audience and what's our differentiated position and message there.

Kerry Guard  32:31  

I love what you're saying about experts. Obviously, as an agency owner, couldn't agree more for obvious reasons. But also, it's true. And like we've had clients let us go because they handed AI to their junior marketer and just said, "You can figure out SEO. Off you go. Good luck with that. And we've had other clients double down on us because they're like, "Nope, we need the experts in the room who know how to do this stuff because it is coming at us fast and it's changing, and and we need people who are deep in the knowledge of this, and so yes, to having the right experts. I think that's. I thought AI was going to turn this on its head, where it would make so much of what we do just easier. But I feel like it's in some regard made it so much harder. Messaging being definitely part of that, making sure that we don't sound like everybody else, but also simple enough that like anybody can understand it. Design agencies are definitely not going anywhere. They to be creative and to look different, absolutely. And AI definitely cannot do that yet. And then everything you're saying from just having that expert in that room and that expertise, I think, is just absolutely, absolutely critical. What else about being AI native do we need to be aware of in regards to making sure that we're balancing the AI with the human aspect? Is there any other blind spots that we haven't covered yet?

Ashish Malpani  34:02  

Yeah And the last thing I would say is, we are also now responsible for figuring out why my AI is better than your AI. So, I mean, every product that's out there is talking about AI, and then it becomes marketing's responsibility to say, here's why you know the way we do AI is better than anybody else does.

Kerry Guard  34:28  

True, everything's AI first or AI native now in terms of messaging. It's so true.

Ashish Malpani  34:34  

Yeah, and then I think it is. So when I look at yes, I mean AI is got to be a critical component going forward. Where it helps is streamlining your workflows, you know, even shortening the workflows and kind of optimizing your repetitive tasks. And some, in some cases, you know, synthesizing how you are reaching out to different people. In your buyer committee, by I mean different, and then synthesizing messages across, let's say, verticals, industries, geos, whatnot. But at the same time, having the human in the loop is kind of really important. I mean, doesn't matter what industry you are in, you have to have the human in the loop, and human. I mean, our role will change. I mean, we are no longer typing things again. We are directing the AI tools to kind of create the right output, create you know, do the analysis right. I mean, if you let AI do everything, it's going to analyze the way it is. It's going to fill in the gaps for the things that doesn't happen. It will hallucinate. It will give you something that doesn't exist. Your messaging will fall flat. Your outreach will fall flat. So this is where our role is going to change from being the creators to being more of an orchestrators to validators and kind of then approvers of whatever is the output coming from the different AI tools, but I think there is no substitute for having the expertise from your humans who are going to be important in this entire chain.

Kerry Guard  36:21  

Let's talk about the efficiency piece for a second because you talked about streamlined, and I think sometimes we get caught up in the idea of things getting making us faster. I don't know about you, but I don't know that AI's necessarily made me faster. What it's allowed me to do is go deeper, and I feel like the products I'm developing now are better than ever because I'm able to be so much more critical and to be able to do things I wasn't able to do before, like in developing websites, I'm able to make things animate and move. I'm able to make sure that the architecture of the website is balanced between making sure bots can find it, but humans can convert on it and being more effective that way, but I don't know necessarily that I'm necessarily faster. So when you talk about streamlined, how do you see that in balancing those things of efficiency with?

Ashish Malpani  37:12  

To your example, right? I mean, when you're creating a website, you know, think about how much time it would have taken you in past to do whatever you're doing. Trade. I mean, some of that wouldn't have been possible, but in order for you to create something that you're doing today would have required a larger team, larger. I mean, a longer timeline, and I think that's all is being compressed. And you know, the thing that you said, right? You want now the website to be, you know, kind of bots can find it, humans can read it. Humans would appreciate you know the effort that is gone in, but at the same time, you know when when the bots scrape it and you know try to figure out why your or your company should come up in their list of top five, list of top 10, so. I think it's very you know it's important and I still have when I do my research today I use Claude kind of 100% of the time and some of the websites do not like allow Claude kind of read them to analyze it.

Ashish Malpani  38:19  

which I think is a mess, right? I mean, ultimately, if you're not allowing the bots, the AI tools to scrape the content, I mean, for whatever reason, I mean, I think you're missing the chance to get your point across. So, I mean, today as marketers, now it's on us to create an experience not for humans, but also for machines and you know these agents that are going to scrape. And so, yes, it may feel overwhelming, but I think this is where AI is helping you improve that efficiency because you can take that. Okay, this is my core content. Now give me you know design that optimizes it for this audience, this audience, this audience, and you know, the streamline of workflow can really happen.

Kerry Guard  39:07  

Yeah, the personalization piece is huge. It is interesting that people are not coming. You know, when we talk about websites, we've brought it up a couple times. So I just want to like close out on this because yes, bots need to be able to read your website and they need to be able to recommend you and or cite you. But when people come to your website, which is much further down the funnel now, they need to immediately convert. Like I'm finding, you should see conversion rates higher. And if you're not, if your traffic has plummeted, but your conversion rates are not higher. Houston, you have a problem, and you should you could you could definitely go fix that. But in terms of websites and that personalization piece too, how are you thinking about with less people coming to the website with less data to act on? How. Is it that less is more aspect, or are you also feeling that sort of panic of like things have gone off a cliff here, and we have less to work with, and this is a problem?

Ashish Malpani  40:11  

I remember, I think it was two and a half, three years ago, I attended a conference where the keynote speaker said websites are dead. No, we are no longer going to need websites, you know, in two years' time, but that's not true, right? Here we are. Here we are. Websites are alive and kicking. But what's changed is yes, you know, by the time people decide to visit the vendor's website, they've already done the research. They know that you know now you are one of the vendor that they are looking to potentially include in their decision-making matrix, and then the question becomes: When they visit your website, are you serving them the content as you know with that kind of mindset where they've taken all the steps? They've you know they've asked their AI to, you know, scrape your website, analyze your content, give them the feedback. They've looked at third-party data, and now they're doing the final push. And now they want to actually, you know, talk to a human. And before they do that, they are looking at the website to see if there's anything new. There's anything that could help them further their understanding in their journey, and this is where I think yes, the awareness pieces definitely make sense. But then you have to figure out how are you serving the next piece of content, right? How are you serving them the next you know kind of thing that would help them move forward in their journey, and I mean now you are seeing more and more companies kind of ungate their content because what is the point if there are less number of people who are going to come in and your email address? I mean, if they're only going to provide you an email address when they're ready to have a you know conversation with you, so do you really want to restrict them from kind of improving their understanding, helping then further down the kind of in their buying process, giving them your part of you saying, here is a new buying criteria that you should be aware of. That when you're evaluating the vendors, you know, have you looked at this? Have you looked at this aspect? Have you looked at that aspect? Right. So, I think this is where you really have to kind of make a decision, and it may depend on industry. You know, maybe something. If you're in retail, maybe you don't want to, you know, start with everything updated. But if you are in a high tech, maybe that's where you flip the switch. So there are things that you would have to change and evolve in order for you to connect with your buyers more effectively.

Kerry Guard  42:55  

Yes, there's so much. There's a lot to do. There's a lot to do. We do have AI to help us do it, but I think what so much of what you touched on, Ashish, in terms of the being AI native and that journey of ensuring that you're reading the signal, you have the human in the loop, you're understanding your customer impact, and then bringing that into market using AI every step of the way to help you, but making sure that it's you ultimately making the decision, having the right experts in the right places as well throughout is just so key to how we make all of these moving parts happen. I would say AI is not simplified. Our jobs has made it made it a little harder, but we are here for it, and we are rising to the occasion.

Ashish Malpani  43:40  

You, you. I mean, I mean, the easiest way to explain it is your lens aperture has increased, right? I mean, yes, AI is has helped you streamline it, but now the expectation is that you are going to do lot more. You know that you should not be able to do before, but from personalization to you know content acceleration to your constant updates, your messaging, you know, positioning. I mean, all of this is kind of now given or expected from you. And yes, so the work. I mean, work is not going to reduce. I mean, you are probably going to end up spending the same or even more amount of work creating things and really optimizing it for the audience that you're trying to reach.

Kerry Guard  44:28  

True, so true, Ashish. I'm so grateful for this conversation. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about being AI native and what it takes?

Ashish Malpani  44:37  

So definitely on LinkedIn. I mean, I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. Tell me a request. I'm happy to kind of have a chat and share some of the things that I've been working on. As I said, I've been kind of a big cloud fan recently, and I've been trying to experiment how do I pull in the signals by leveraging skills. Agents as well as MCP servers and clients to kind of pull in the data, kind of orchestrate all the downstream activities, and making sure that we are able to create something that's meaningful and really connecting with the buyers the right way.

Kerry Guard  45:21  

Right way, yeah. Talk about the buyer. It totally is. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much for this conversation, and thank you to those who joined us. I see some YouTube folks. We appreciate you. If you're here on LinkedIn, be sure to comment, and we will get back to you asynchronously because the conversation doesn't need to end, and we are here for it. This episode was brought to you by MKG Marketing, the digital marketing agency that helps brands get found via SEO and digital ads. It's shows hosted by me, Kerry Guard, and co-founder of MKG Marketing. And if you'd like to be a guest, Danny, I'd love to have you on. I have the rest of the year I need to fill, and I am looking for guests. So if you are a marketer and you have something to say about what is happening in marketing right now, I am here for it. Let's chat about it. DM me. Thank you all so much. Thank you again, Ashish. Yep. Bye. That was my conversation with Ashish Malpani. If you'd like to learn more about product marketing, how Ashish purchases it, and if you'd like to read his book, The 10th Son, please please go check him out on LinkedIn. His link is in the show notes. If you liked this conversation as much as I did and found it as warm and inviting as I did, please like, subscribe, and share. Ashish, I'm so thankful you joined me. What a wonderful conversation! This episode is brought to you by MKG Marketing, our agency, the Accelerate submission of cybersecurity vendors via SEO, digital ads, and analytics. So it's by me, Kerry Guard, CEO and co-founder of MKG Marketing. Music mix and mastering done by All Snells. And if you'd like to be a guest, visit mkgmarketing.com to apply.