AI for Search; plus, the value of Marketing Funnels. With Charley Karpiuk of Airtame

On this episode, we talk to Charley Karpiuk, Growth Marketing Manager at Airtame.

His career path hasn't been traditional, with his first Marketing experience coming from promoting his own music events as a DJ, and starting an English language school in Japan. These both showed him the importance of community building, and the value of remaining adaptable to the situation.

Charley talks about the pros and cons of using funnels to design marketing strategies [12:45], their application in B2B and B2B2C, and how to measure their success [20:15].

Generative AI and ChatGPT are the hot topics right now. So we talk specifically about how that may impact search over the next year or two, and how we think Google may react to Bing's quick adoption of AI [24:45].

And since this is the Marketing Mix, we ask Charley about his favorite cocktail - his own creation called a 'Citron de Charles' (said with a french accent!). Hear the recipe at [35:50].

To connect with Charley, find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleskarpiuk/

In the episode, I mention a New York Times article about Bing's AI Chatbot. The full article is here: A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled by Kevin Roose.

Timestamps:

0:03:55  Creating a Community of Japanese Housewives and Word of Mouth Marketing

0:06:31 Exploring Different Personas and Strategies for Community Building

0:11:13 The Benefits of a Degree in Philosophy for Marketing

0:12:48 The Usefulness of Funnels in Marketing

0:18:27 KPIs and Leading Indicators for Digital Marketing Funnels

0:21:33 Funnel Strategies for B2B2C Marketing

0:22:32 Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketing 

0:25:25 Exploring the Impact of Chatbots on Search Engine Results

0:35:50 A French Twist on a Screwdriver [Cocktail Recipe]

Transcript

Steve Cummins:

Today I'm joined by Charley Karpiuk, who is Growth Marketing Manager at Airtame. Someone who I've always found has interesting viewpoints on whatever we want to talk about on marketing. So, Charley, no pressure. I've just told everybody you're going to have something interesting to say. Before we dig in, maybe you could just give us a little bit of background and tell us how you got to where you are in the world of marketing.

Charley Karpiuk:

First of all, thanks for having me. It is a pleasure to be here. I’m the growth marketing manager at Airtame currently. And growth marketing, I think, has a lot of different definitions, so we can probably dig into that. But I've been a marketing professional now for 12 years. My background varies greatly. Started really from DJing and promoting different shows. I think that any music promotion is a crash course into marketing.

You really have to get out there and find ways to bring as many people to your shows as possible. And to do so, you can't do it all one-on-one. Nobody's going to listen to you, and you have to find a way to get out to the masses and persuade them to come. So that's where it all started, I remember once asking someone who was a director or a VP of marketing when I was in college, and I had no idea. I asked them what's the difference between marketing and sales? And he said, basically marketing is low-touch. We go after the many and sales goes after the few. That makes sense, but really, they're trying to do the same thing. 

I didn't go to school for marketing. I studied English and Philosophy and graduated in 2007, which was pretty much the worst time possible to graduate with those degrees. I found my way, traveling and thought I would teach English. So I moved to Japan, taught English there. also did a lot of DJing and promotion there, which was quite strange. But I after a year of teaching and then a little bit of traveling afterwards, I decided to start my own English teaching company. And this is where I started to get really much deeper into marketing. I didn't really see it as marketing. I just saw it as how do we get people aware of our product, which was not just English lessons, but also really a tech platform that allowed for in browser video in 2010.

I was also talking about community and trying to find out ways to broaden that awareness and find it in a low cost scenario, which was really through advocacy or community. As it turns out, Japanese Housewives is a community, or an audience, a group of people in Japan. It's very specific in that they talk a lot when they are with each other. And they also do enjoy English lessons, not necessarily just to learn English, but also to interact with each other on a regular basis. I discovered that focusing on this particular audience and their inclinations for community was a good idea. We tried it, and it actually had a huge amount of growth, and it was very easy for them to use. They didn't have to go anywhere, but they could still talk to each other very easily. So that's really the beginning of my marketing experience. From there, I went into publishing and worked at several media, creative agencies. I also started several other companies and wound up now currently in a hybrid B2B, B2B2C place.

Steve Cummins:

It's one thing I find with marketers, they very rarely have a straight line from a marketing degree, to getting a marketing job, and then I becoming a marketer. Although, I have to say from that description, yours is definitely one of the more interesting and sinuous ways to do it. A lot of things I could dig into there. But, one thing that just struck me when you were talking about word of mouth and community, that's big right now. People are talking about community, Dark social, which I think is really just another phrase for what we used to call word of mouth. It sounds like you tapped into that really early. I'm just curious, things that you learned from doing that. Nobody told you about it, but you just made it happen. Do you see that playing out in what you're doing now in your current role? Or is that community very different?

Charley Karpiuk: 

It’s not necessarily playing out in my current role. It's quite difficult, I think for Airtame, where the product itself really aligns itself to anyone who has a screen – and that turns out to be a lot of people!

Steve Cummins:

That's not very narrow!

Charley Karpiuk: 

No, not very narrow. Getting deeper into our own database and our own metrics, finding out who our early adopters are, our later adopters, laggards, things of that nature, will be useful. But also finding out the personas that we have, which turn out to be managerial type IT manager, and then, creatives such as teachers.

Steve Cummins: 

Very different, right? That's a very different persona than an IT manager, I would imagine.

Charley Karpiuk: 

Indeed. very different industries, as well as their product adoption. Creatives generally will come in earlier on the first half of the curve, and the managers will come in about the second. They're looking for something that’s a sure bet, a little bit more proven.  Whereas creatives are a little bit more interested in exploring.

Steve Cummins: 

Going from creatives to IT managers, to teachers who are probably somewhere in between on that spectrum. That's some interesting personalities you're dealing with there. And I think the other challenge with communities, I'm sure you found this when you were first building it, is that is a long-term play.  Not for when we need to boost sales 30% this year, let's do it by community building, right? Community building is, I think, something you do, let's say in the background as part of your three-year plan, five-year plan, whatever it may be. I think it's really tough.

Charley Karpiuk: 

It really depends on where you are in your company. If it's a very early-stage company, if you're really just starting up, community will actually probably be something you want to start on earlier. And it depends on what you mean by community. Simply by having a WhatsApp chat going with a few people that are in your local industry or local community that are focused on this industry, getting that instant feedback from them is going to be really big and very useful to you. That’s a very small community and that's okay. but that can really go a long way, especially if you have a product that is working for them, and then they go out and then advocate for you and draw in more people and potentially more business.

That's certainly the goal. I've seen some people try to focus really early on that community, but it in my opinion, it needs to be very narrow. Otherwise, it's a lot of work and can be a lot of money to even try to get people to do it. It depends on what you really want to get out of them. Some people want user-generated content, which is a fantastic thing. It's using your product, it's incredibly valuable. but at the same time that's a lot of work for people to do, and they have to really love it. So you have to nurture them too

Steve Cummins:

Without diving too far down this rabbit hole, the other tough part is ROI. With Community, there's a level of belief to it. We know we need to build a community because of all the good things that'll bring - the word of mouth, the user-generated content. I've seen companies use Slack channels really, really well for this, where the community actually jumps in, similar to a Reddit thread, and helps people out. But if you're in a company that's all about ROI, I think it's a tough sell. 

The other thing I just wanted to, to remark on - you had a degree in philosophy, you said. So how has that helped you in this journey?

Charley Karpiuk:

Primarily in being able to critically analyze things. Philosophy is a bunch of different ideas and you soak them in, you think about them, and you try to connect the dots. I think that is a very beneficial thing in marketing, because there is no silver bullet. There is no true answer to marketing.

There's a certain level of logic that you also have to leverage in philosophy that is very valuable to this in terms of learning and adapting. Things are changing very quickly in the world of marketing and the world in general. So that’s a very valuable skill, and I think that a So, lot of people do not have that skill.

Steve Cummins:

Learning and adapting, for sure. You said your marketing journey started about 12 years ago. If you think about the marketing scene 12 years ago compared to now, half the stuff we're talking about didn't even exist then. So, I guess, as we’re talking about philosophies, Funnel marketing is a philosophy - maybe a lowercase p philosophy - that a lot of people follow. You and I have talked about it in the past. I'll admit, I have mixed feelings on it. I think it's a great way to explain to non-marketers what you're trying to achieve and why we're doing certain things. I think it can be useful in the early days when you're building out a strategy to keep you on track.

The thing that has always concerned me is that it’s oversimplified in some ways. That's why it's so useful. But that oversimplification can lead you into bad decisions when you get locked into the idea, for example of, “we're doing this for somebody who is absolutely in the decision phase”. And therefore, it needs to be exactly this, when the reality is, as we all know, nobody goes through the funnel the way it's written. I support it in certain ways, but I'm also wary that it doesn't become the straight jacket around which you build all of your marketing. I'm curious, your thoughts about it, and particularly since the role you're in at the moment is B2B2C. 

Charley Karpiuk:

Yes. To the first to comment, I think you are definitely right. To not have it act as a strait jacket and limit your efforts is definitely something very important to take into account there. But my approach and the reason why I use them is to find a way to measure what you're doing across the full spectrum of marketing. And what do I mean by the full spectrum? From social media campaigns, which are generally awareness based - they sometimes convert people directly – and finding a way to consider all of these different mediums and efforts and map out what are the goals. Ultimately, of course, you want more revenue, but how do we get there?

What steps do you generally take? In project management parlance, what’s the critical path? What is the critical path to a sale? And then hopefully retention and then advocacy, which then circles back into that growth. It's about mapping that out so that you have that critical path. From there, we also have to remember that people do not necessarily follow that exact path. They may skip paths or I would say that they may not follow that rigid structure, which says, start with a social media post, then I go to website, then I go fill out a form, then I buy product. This is <laugh> not necessarily the case. And a funnel that marketers usually use are in 2D.

That's how they can present it, right? And in fact, it's more of a 3D, model, it's really a marketing tornado, if you will. It's a marketing cone causing a ton of destruction as it goes. Yes. And that is more difficult to visualize. It's certainly more difficult to communicate within a company. And I think that for some people, it can be difficult to understand that there's multiple steps, a minimum five different phases in almost any funnel. So even in 2D, it can be quite complex. And it becomes even more complex as you start to flesh it out and understand what works for your business. I do use funnels specifically to map out that critical path so that we can have some way of measuring what's happening. Understanding that, for the most part, nobody's going to follow that exact path, but you can glean enough information to say, “Hey, we have a problem with product adoption”.

Let's say we've got a freemium product, whatever it is. You get a thousand people to sign up and then 900 people try it once. That's a great conversion rate. but then after two months, you only have 10 people that are still using it. In that funnel alone, you would say, Hey, we have a problem with adoption. They're not continually or habitually using this product. Right? So that's a good way to find out what the problems are and where you need to focus your efforts.

Steve Cummins: 

As far as goals or KPIs go. Is it the conversion from one stage to the next, is that the most important KPI to track? Or are there other things that you look at?

Charley Karpiuk: 

Definitely that conversion KPI between phases is ultimately the most important. Some people would say, just as an example, what is the goal for a growth marketing manager? They'll say, traffic or lead generation or this and that. But, actually the ultimate KPI is revenue. That’s the goal at the end of the day. So, with that said, there definitely are leading indicators within each phase that will lead up to it. 

A good example are top of funnel ads. Let's say we've got Google search and somebody clicks your ad and you've got a certain number of impressions of that ad. At the end of the day, you are looking actually at the number of people who go to wherever you want them to go, let's say the website, and then engage in some way and not bounce. So, all of those things that I mentioned before, click rate specifically, for an ad would be a leading indicator to how well things are going in your awareness phase.

Steve Cummins:

If you really have detailed out the funnel and have these metrics, how do you keep track of all this? Do you have dashboards that you use? Is there a particular app or software? Is it Google Sheets? How do you track all of this and then report on it?

Charley Karpiuk: 

I think there's, there's a lot of ways to do this. As they say, there's many ways to skin a cat, right? 

The simplest certainly is tracking it on a spreadsheet. If you want to get more advanced and make it look prettier, you could use Google's data studio. There’s a way to create funnels quite easily in Google Analytics 4, and have hard set rules for how you want it. I think that that's a good start for people that are fairly new to it, but have a certain level of understanding of analytics.

Steve Cummins: 

Part of the issue is how much are you willing to pay for it? Because there's some great analytics packages out there, but it's going to cost you.

Going back to how you set up the funnels. You've worked in B2B, you've worked in B2C, you're now B2B2C. Any differences you see in how you work with the funnels between those different go-to markets?

Charley Karpiuk: 

That's an interesting question. I think it's interesting primarily because I don't necessarily see that. It's not just about the funnels, but I think it comes down to something a little bit more fundamental, possibly philosophical, of how marketing works. And I would like to say that really all of this is marketing to people. 

Steve Cummins: 

I think it's an interesting point, philosophical or otherwise. People are people, so to me, typically, B2B is a longer consideration cycle, depending on exactly what you're talking about. whereas consumer, in most cases is relatively short. Maybe not for big ticket items. But for most things it is. So, I think forB2C, you tend to move through those phases a lot quicker. and there's generally less importance to somebody on that decision, right? Like a B2B decision, it, could impact your career, livelihood, promotion, whatever it may be. Consumer, typically, you'll kick yourself if you made the wrong decision, and then you move on. I've always felt that yes, it's a similar, similar funnel, similar journey. But the amount of time spent on each stage is probably varies.

Charley Karpiuk: 

It certainly does. To simplify it here, B2C seems to be much more emotional in the awareness and consideration phase. whereas B2B is definitely more analytical and there is a deeper consideration phase. And as you had mentioned, big ticket items, if I'm going to buy a $30,000 camera lens, I'm probably going to do my research for sure. And at that level, you're effectively acting as a business anyway. So, there are definitely funnels that focus more on emotion.

Steve Cummins: 

With any of these things, the basic principles apply, and then you just work out how to apply them to what it is you are working with.

Charley Karpiuk: 

And that's the fun bit of marketing, in my opinion. It's a puzzle for each piece of industry or each audience and each product.

Steve Cummins: 

I agree. I've been lucky in my career. I've worked in a bunch of different industries and so you’re right. It's always different. You're learning something, you're adjusting, you're adapting. It keeps me on my toes, which is always good. 

You may have heard people have been talking about AI and ChatGPT. How is this all going to impact marketing? I'm kind of sick of So, reading everybody's take on LinkedIn, if I'm honest. but thought it might be interesting to get your viewpoint. Let's move beyond those initial “hot takes” from everybody. and since you're very close to the world of search and PPC, any thoughts on how AI and or chat GPT and its competitors are going to start having an impact on search over the next few months, next couple of years?

Charley Karpiuk: 

My first take is that it will definitely change the way that search engines collect results. I think there's been a lot of talk about how Google is panicking about this. They're probably fairly concerned that there's a tool that effectively doesn't provide the search results. It effectively provides an answer, right? Whether that answer’s correct is another question, whether you should believe it. Hot take here. Do not believe what a chat bot tells you!

Steve Cummins: 

A hundred percent.

Charley Karpiuk: 

It doesn’t provide sources. And it won't anytime soon, and I think that that's really important. Do not take these as face value. I think it's going to affect search, for the time being, negatively. I think a lot of marketers may not be skilled enough to understand that. Using content generated by a chat bot is not quality content. Meaning, it could be completely false, right? Chatbots are going to affect search in two parts. One is that people may use it for a content generation tool, which is not what I would consider using it for. I think that's a very poor decision, the reason being that it’s a machine that’s creating something that is supposed to be for people, but really other machines can tell that a machine wrote it.

I think Google will definitely be able to see that and down rank or deprioritize that content. So that's one piece to it. The other the idea that chatbots will effectively replace search by simply providing the answers. I think we're a fair way away from that, so I’m not too worried about that. But the way that you can leverage chatbots is by asking it specific questions to produce some level of content that is meant for a machine, not a person. This is the technical aspect of SEO. Effectively, metatag descriptions, things of that nature, where it understands how search machines understand and read search. So, use the machines to talk to machines. That's how I think that it will greatly affect it. Smart people will be able to leverage these tools and improve their search.

Steve Cummins: 

That’s an interesting take. I haven't heard that angle before, but use machines to talk to machines has a certain poetic feel to it. Going back to your point about search engines using it to serve up the answer, it strikes me that that's what Google has been trying to do for the last few years. It used to send you to a bunch of pages, and you go do your own research. And they've been getting more into this idea of serving up the one answer for you, which actually makes sure that you don't go off to somebody else's website. That’s caused a lot of problems with companies because they're saying that they're basically taking the company’s data and showing it as their own, whether it's booking flights or giving you weather information.

So, Google have been trying to give you the golden answer, but you have the other stuff below it. And in most cases, to your point, you get the source, but it's almost now as though it's working against Google. They’ve started to train us to expect the perfect answer at the top, and now somebody else's chatbot is maybe going to do that for them. I'm guessing they're having to reassess and maybe it'll end up diverging and there'll be different search engines for different things. There's one that’s going to be pulling together their idea of the perfect answer, which may or may not be right. And then there'll be others where you're going to get the source and you'll be able to read through it. So maybe it will lead to different engines for different purposes?

Charley Karpiuk:

My gut feeling is that Google's AI and machine learning is far and away better than anything else on the market. and it's probably so powerful that they're really trying to figure out is the world ready for this? Are they ready to release it? The answer is no, they are not ready to release it, I think.

Steve Cummins: 

And they don't need to, right? Right. I mean they can afford to take their time. Earlier on you said you've got to be adaptable, and things change. When you're talking about how Google goes and finds the golden answer or whatever, it makes me think about Wikipedia. Because in the early days of Wikipedia, it was a joke, you can't trust that, you don't know where it's come from. And then people started to realize, actually, because of the way it's put together and managed, actually it’s getting pretty good. And then in Google searches, Wikipedia would quite often be the top one. And I remember at one point, the marketing challenge was always, we’ve got to beat Wikipedia on whatever big search terms are. Let's make sure we get above Wikipedia.

I don't think anybody says that any more. You can't get ahead of Wikipedia unless you are so narrow that it's not on there. It's part of that evolution. Eventually Wikipedia won't be top, because there will be other data sets and what have you. I think this is just another step on the way. But I have to agree with you. Google have been looking at this for a really long time and have a lot of very smart people on it. So I certainly wouldn't count them out yet.

Charley Karpiuk: 

Certainly not. We'll see some very interesting things as we go along. I find it also interesting - a little bit of a tangent here. I think he was a fired developer or engineer that was working specifically on the machine learning and Google chatbot, He was convinced that the chatbot that they had created was sentient, right? I'm not going to say, oh, it's definitely sentient, man. They’re coming for us. But I think you have to wonder what is that definition of sentience? I think there's some really interesting things that happen here. Microsoft Bing's chatbot started to talk back to users. Really interesting stuff. and even though that makes it seem like a chatbot is alive. and because we naturally anthropomorphize the things that we see because we're human-centric,

Steve Cummins: 

Because we’re humans. That’s what we do.

Charley Karpiuk: 

Yeah, we see other humans in other things.

Steve Cummins: 

I did read some of those, and I think the one that got the biggest coverage was the New York Times reporter who got into this whole discussion with the Bing chatbot and the chatbot decided it wanted to marry the reporter. And it was really weird, but if you went through and read it, and the reporter's just doing his job. But the reporter asked very strange questions, very leading questions. You could see it going down that rabbit hole. it's not the thing that you or I would do if we were trying to find out, what's the best way to get from New York to DC. Which is what we're going to be using these things for much more. I thought it was very interesting. And then Bing put guardrails around it, I think they limited it to five queries. Because it also seemed to be that the longer the conversation went on, the more it went off the rails.

Steve Cummins: 

At the very least, it made people stop and think, what is this? And we’re in such early days of this, it's going to be really interesting.

Charley Karpiuk: 

I think so. but for the time being, it is really important to understand that people should be creating content for people for the time being. Or until our machine overlords do actually take over! But until then, create content for people and use machines to create content for machines. That's as simple as I can make it.

Steve Cummins: 

I’ll get that printed on a t-shirt for you! 

This is called the Marketing Mix. People wonder why, and I have a bunch of answers for it, but one particular answer is over the years I've always found a great place to have interesting conversations about marketing is over a cocktail or two. So, last question or last significant question. What is your favorite cocktail? What do you like to mix up?

Charley Karpiuk: 

I like something with a bit of citrus in it, I think I always have. An easy go-to is the margarita, but something that I created I called “Citron de Charles.”

Steve Cummins: 

Fancy!

Charley Karpiuk: 

Oh yes, it's French, but specifically because I use Orangina. It's sometimes hard to find but honestly, it's really my take on the screwdriver. You put a bunch of ice, a fair amount of vodka. Have a nice wedge of lemon in there. And Orangina. It's a sweet mix. It's got bubbles in it, and it’s quite refreshing. Nice. 

Steve Cummins: 

I'm going to have to give that a try.

Charley Karpiuk: 

It's a winner.

Steve Cummins: 

It reminds me of my childhood, because when I was a kid, you couldn't buy Orangina. I grew up in the UK and you couldn't buy it in England. It was a French product. But if you went on a school trip to France, suddenly Orangina was everywhere and it was this big treat. Adding some vodka and some ice to it definitely sounds like a treat. I'll be trying one of those out. 

I lied. I have one more question for you, if that's okay. If people want to find out more about Charley and maybe DJ Charley, maybe marketing Charley, one of the many Charley’s out there, what's the best place for people to connect with you?

Charley Karpiuk: 

The best way to find me is on LinkedIn. it's linkedin.com/in/charleskarpiuk. Feel free to connect with me, message me, disagree with me and I might fight you. I might not. we'll see! That's the easiest way for the time being.

Steve Cummins: 

I'll put that link in the show notes so that you can track Charley down and argue with him on all things growth marketing. Charley, thank you very much for taking some time out to chat with me today. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to talking with you again in the future.

Charley Karpiuk: 

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.