If I were VP Marketing... | Volodymyr Korol, VP Marketing @ Lodgify

00:00:00: Logify is a fifty million plus ARR vacation rental management platform that empowers thousands of independent hosts to compete against Airbnb through direct bookings.

00:00:11: And over the years they have built a significant SEO and organic footprint contributing to that growth.

00:00:18: Joining me on the podcast today is Volodomir Korol, VP of Marketing at Logify in Barcelona.

00:00:25: He joined in twenty twenty four to restructure the entire thirty plus person marketing organization across eight functions to drive sustainable AR growth.

00:00:35: I'm curious to learn more about how he leads such a big marketing org, how he thinks about SEO fitting into the bigger picture and where he sees organic growth, SEO and AI search heading.

00:00:47: So welcome to the podcast Volodomir.

00:00:50: Thank you very much.

00:00:51: Thank you so much.

00:00:52: Pleasure to be here.

00:00:53: Thank you for having me.

00:00:54: Nice.

00:00:55: Thanks so much for coming on, especially in a busy week.

00:00:59: Let's start.

00:01:00: Maybe give me a quick rundown of Logify, your product and the target

00:01:04: groups.

00:01:05: Yeah, of course, with all of the pleasure.

00:01:08: Very briefly, Logify is the all-in-one vacation rental software designed for hosts, primarily for hosts.

00:01:16: Meaning that anyone who has an Airbnb apartment or an apartment that they are renting out with Bookingcom, they can use Logify to, first of all, scale their business to generate more revenue to ensure that they put out the best prices for their rental.

00:01:33: then secondly to unify all of the communications with all of the guests across different platforms.

00:01:39: so for example if you use just Airbnb you can easily connect to Airbnb and then if you would like to get your List and publish across different platforms.

00:01:52: You can do it like in a few clicks.

00:01:54: So basically this is like a distribution platform as well.

00:01:59: You can unify all of the messages across different platforms.

00:02:02: So you have one unified inbox.

00:02:04: You can automate workflows.

00:02:06: You can automate messaging, check-ins, check-outs.

00:02:10: And thirdly, I would say you can arrange all of the compliance and accounting and finance aspects.

00:02:18: So you have reporting, you have all of the accounting, basically everything that you need to run your vacation rental, meaning that hosts can use it as a one-stop shop to automate basically.

00:02:33: automate, streamline any workflow, any process related to their vacation rentals, regardless of where they're being published.

00:02:45: And what attracted you to join Logify?

00:02:47: Just your passion for travel and... Yeah,

00:02:49: yeah, that's a good question.

00:02:51: I think the product... the team and the challenge, you know, so that's like a trio that I've been assessing.

00:03:00: I spent many years in CRM but before I've been working in property management software field as well, so I thought, you know, this is something similar.

00:03:10: a little bit more fun than CRM and Enterprise notebook platforms.

00:03:15: So I thought this is a good challenge.

00:03:18: And also the organization has a good challenge to scale much faster while sustaining the specific efficiency metrics.

00:03:30: So I think it's a good challenge for me.

00:03:33: Speaking of... Yeah.

00:03:35: Yes, speaking of challenge, I also said it in the introduction.

00:03:39: You have a big marketing org and you had to like restructure reorganize to maybe give listeners or viewers a first introduction into that.

00:03:51: Can you give us a rundown of like?

00:03:54: how is the org structured?

00:03:55: because you have eight functions?

00:03:57: You have thirty plus marketers like.

00:04:00: this is quite a big org.

00:04:01: So what are the different functions you have?

00:04:03: Yeah, yeah, good question.

00:04:05: It is a big team.

00:04:08: I would keep it not very detailed.

00:04:11: At a high level, I would say that we're focused on lifecycle marketing, we're focused on acquisition, and then we're focused on brand and community.

00:04:21: So this is how we try to split the core areas.

00:04:26: separately apart from these core tribes, as we can call them.

00:04:32: We have the customer-led growth, which is also known as product-led growth.

00:04:36: So this is the function that is very in-between product, marketing, sales, customer success, and other teams.

00:04:47: Overall, all of the functions this this year.

00:04:51: next year we're trying to embed them much deeper into the product.

00:04:54: so this is the goal for us to make sure that all of the initiatives are customer backed focused on the customer value.

00:05:02: so that's why like the restructures the changes that we have been making on the team With the team have been focused specifically on this like customer value as the core driver of all of the movement.

00:05:17: So that's how it high level describe it

00:05:21: and can you give us a little bit of a better understanding?

00:05:26: So if somebody for example wants to make customer value a priority in their marketing or like how just maybe from one or two examples How does it look like in practice?

00:05:38: Yeah, like as a good example would be conversion rate optimization, you know, so customer value, this is something that has to be perceived right away.

00:05:49: Depending on the traffic source, you're like less or more aware was the product, you know, so if you have been generated through organic or any other LLM, you potentially you have to go through the nurturing cycle.

00:06:02: If you're generated through bait, you know, you have a very short.

00:06:05: life cycle, basically you need to understand what's the value of a product immediately.

00:06:10: So that's why now we're building a lot of new good stuff to ensure that all of that traffic is going to be able to understand the customer value immediately.

00:06:23: Like how we're addressing their jobs to be done, how we're addressing their challenges, maybe to have like two erase this boundary between the marketing website and the product.

00:06:35: This is not live yet, everything that I'm talking about, but we have a lot of good stuff coming in now.

00:06:46: with the transformation that we're undergoing now as the organization.

00:06:50: Overall, as the team, as the business, we're undergoing transformation with the new CEO joining this year as well.

00:06:59: So we have a lot of new people coming in and joining Logify.

00:07:03: So there's a lot, a lot happening.

00:07:06: But I think that would be a good example, you know, how we can communicate and translate the value of a product earlier in the buying cycle, earlier in the customer journey.

00:07:16: And what would you say from your perspective also from your very personal role?

00:07:20: What is like very key to lead such a marketing org and to also lead it through change?

00:07:27: Because I can imagine that there are also marketing leaders out there that are also going through phases of transformation with a lot of things happening with AI, but also like changes just in markets.

00:07:40: So what's like your?

00:07:43: What is your playbook on how to navigate this?

00:07:47: Yeah, it's a tough one, I think.

00:07:51: I don't think there is one playbook in the end.

00:07:54: So I would love to have one playbook that is going to be applicable to every use case and every situation or challenge that we are undergoing, but there is not.

00:08:05: So I would say, first of all, prioritization matters, you know, so to make sure that everything is assessed in terms of how much we believe in it, what is the effort required, and what's the outcome of every activity and initiative, there is a part of this transformation.

00:08:21: So prioritization is the first one.

00:08:24: And secondly, we just have to understand that change is the new norm, you know?

00:08:29: So I think the mindset has to transform.

00:08:34: It's not about my team only, it's about all of us.

00:08:36: We can see how much the environment changing now every month, you know?

00:08:41: There is something new.

00:08:43: So there is, like, I think those days where we had like, this is transformation, we have undergone the transformation, this is the end.

00:08:53: Now we can calm down.

00:08:55: This is over.

00:08:56: I don't believe this is gonna be happening, you know.

00:08:59: So we just need to change our mindset and I'm trying to work with myself as well, you know, personally with all of the teams I'm working with, with my direct reports of role with other peers that this is like, this is okay.

00:09:15: We're gonna be going, other going a lot of changes and multi transformations as we grow.

00:09:23: That's how we need to embrace the reality.

00:09:27: Makes a whole lot of sense.

00:09:28: Now, obviously the headline for this podcast is Masters of Search and I already introduced it in the introduction that SEO, but also like organic in general, now maybe also LLMs are important to Logify.

00:09:42: Can you give us a little bit of your assessment?

00:09:45: How important do you feel SEO or like search, no matter?

00:09:49: maybe also the platform is in your overall marketing stack?

00:09:53: Yes, of course.

00:09:55: I would even say the channel mix.

00:09:57: So in the channel mix, this is one of the big drivers of acquisition.

00:10:02: Logify, before I joined, they had like the best inbound machine in this segment, you know, so Alberto and Carla, they have been like investing a lot of resource and time to build out that machine.

00:10:18: And now We have a good foundation for everything that is coming with Geo and the new LLMs.

00:10:26: So it is a big part of the acquisition and it should remain a big one as we transform.

00:10:35: We just have to build up on that foundation.

00:10:38: And what are things?

00:10:40: maybe that from the foundation you saw that are good and help you also for the future.

00:10:47: And are there maybe also things where you felt like, okay, we have to maybe rethink that or maybe like question the relevance of this for the future and this new AI search reality.

00:11:00: Oh, yeah, the question we have to question a lot now, you know, so.

00:11:06: I think as the foundation for a classical inbound model, it's been brilliant.

00:11:11: But obviously now with all of the challenges we have with LLMs, with CPCs, with the traffic going down because of the AI summaries of all of the... I think the biggest problem is the way the consumption model is built.

00:11:29: So now LLMs are going to just consume the content that you produce, not giving this hue not giving you this first touch point with the user meaning that before you would be able to build subconsciously the first like subconsciously be a part of this.

00:11:53: I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to put it to have to have this kind of touchpoint that is not necessarily product-driven but leadership-driven, now you don't have this ability, now you don't have this opportunity, so you're just being used.

00:12:09: All of your effort you're putting into that inbound or all of the content you develop is being used just to generate immediate value to the user.

00:12:18: In the end, this is good for users, but for brands, this is an additional layer of challenge because you cannot hook them in the very beginning of their customer journey.

00:12:28: So now you generate more high-quality traffic, more purchase-ready traffic, but you cannot hook them and build some kind of trust in the very, very beginning of the customer lifecycle.

00:12:40: So that's why that's the part where we need to challenge a lot.

00:12:45: We need to challenge how we Like.

00:12:48: okay now we're not able to do it.

00:12:50: So what do we want to do?

00:12:53: differently, you know.

00:12:54: So how do we build that kind of early stage trust with the users?

00:12:58: Given that we don't have the opportunity and capability as we used to have before?

00:13:02: so I think that's the core part.

00:13:05: and Can you give us a little bit of a behind the scenes how that looked like for you?

00:13:09: Yes, I mean now I think we We will be investing much more in GEO overall, specifically thinking about how we generate contacts, how we generate those early stages and how we untapped the temp potential, the total addressable, total serviceable market potential by investing, first of all, in community and brand.

00:13:37: Long term like short-term investment is pretty much clear, you know, so you still need to invest in SEO.

00:13:43: you still need to invest in geo.

00:13:45: Same in the end is very similar, you know, so it's some some some kind of difference.

00:13:51: there is we know there is there but ultimately you know.

00:13:56: just GO is the new CEO and there are rules on how you need to optimize stores.

00:14:01: that so I wouldn't say it's a short-term investment compared to paid or performance marketing which is like a very short way on acquiring the value and fulfilling the funnel.

00:14:13: So GEO would be the midterm, but long-term, you need to invest in brand and community.

00:14:18: You need to build trust, you need to generate and provide real value to users.

00:14:22: Instead of just asking for the contact data randomly in every touch point, you know, let's give me, give us a phone number to view this.

00:14:33: picture or a slide you know I think this is.

00:14:37: we're done with that.

00:14:38: finally so you need to generate some real trust you know so we're going to be investing more into academy and projects like that how we can actually give back to the community.

00:14:52: As the organization, we have a lot of knowledge and we would love to share this knowledge with the community.

00:14:57: With the new hosts who are there starting their journeys, who are there to try and to understand how to navigate in this environment with all of the regulations and compliance that you have to live with, which is a huge challenge for them.

00:15:14: We would love to help.

00:15:15: So I think it's a mutual Mutually beneficial journey for us as a brand and for hosts to whom we can actually educate and help them navigate in this quite challenging journey.

00:15:29: You mentioned academy.

00:15:30: can you give us a little bit of an idea what this is what this is about.

00:15:36: Yes, and no, I think because this one, we have an Academy, which is a pretty classical Academy on like how you start, how do you start your Airbnb business?

00:15:48: How do you, how do you start with the PMS?

00:15:52: Like some basics of the compliance, the laws, regulations, but we're going to be doing something bigger in the coming months.

00:16:00: So I cannot disclose what specifically, but we have a lot of ideas on how to actually transform this into something more meaningful and long term.

00:16:12: Okay, then maybe let's put it that way.

00:16:15: I also talked to a lot of marketing leaders who get the idea of investing into these long-term assets and something like building a community, maybe also building a course and then there are like role models like for example Logify but also other companies like for example Surfer, they have invested into courses and education material for quite some time already and although marketing leaders get it, then some of them are still too much drawn to short-term ROI.

00:16:48: What is different for you?

00:16:49: Why are you having this long-term thinking and others are maybe too short-term focused?

00:16:57: I think it's pretty simple.

00:17:01: You have to deliver results now.

00:17:04: Business is not gonna wait.

00:17:06: You have to pay salaries in the end.

00:17:07: So you need to understand what's your short-term versus long-term game.

00:17:11: Obviously, we're gonna be investing in paid acquisition and paid marketing as well.

00:17:16: We're not gonna stop that.

00:17:18: But long-term... Speaking about paid marketing, it's not a sustainable growth model, you know, so you have to invest in community, you have to invest in brand, you have to invest in customer-led growth, you know, in retention and understanding.

00:17:33: how do you activate the users, how users are being happy or unhappy across their customer journey.

00:17:40: Why they need to stay with you?

00:17:42: because marketing now.

00:17:44: we think about marketing as a life cycle, you know, so it's not just we have top of funnel.

00:17:48: Let's own top of funnel and forget about the rest.

00:17:51: I don't.

00:17:51: I think this is like the wrong approach from the very beginning.

00:17:55: so for me it's clear we have to invest there.

00:17:58: obviously we're going to need to strike the good balance between short term and long term and we will be doing short term investment as well.

00:18:06: but I think everyone all of the marketeers now.

00:18:09: my suggestion to them would be please allocate at least some time to think what's what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:18:15: you know what's going to happen in two years with this organization.

00:18:19: if you're if you want to exit in one year maybe it's a good strategy for you to borrow.

00:18:25: you know because I call it It's not it's not a gross model.

00:18:28: you borrow traffic from Google basically you that the traffic that they're buying for you and that's it.

00:18:36: So if you want to exit and sell your company in a couple of years, that makes sense.

00:18:40: But if you want to build the long lasting branded, I mean, I have bad news for them.

00:18:46: And what you're feeling about.

00:18:48: the right the bad ends also over time in a company's life.

00:18:52: so i can imagine some people thinking if you are at i don't know double digit million ar it's easier to say yeah i have to.

00:19:02: so maybe they are wrong.

00:19:03: but i can imagine them saying it's easier to justify the investment.

00:19:07: what would you say like if you think about.

00:19:11: A smaller company that is.

00:19:14: Maybe still at startup stage, but they're growing and they are obviously investing in paid because that's just what you do.

00:19:21: When would you say is the right time to start investing into community brand and all of that and what percentage?

00:19:27: So should you allocate fifty fifty the budgets?

00:19:30: Is it eighty twenty?

00:19:31: What?

00:19:31: what's your thinking about it?

00:19:33: Yeah, I've been.

00:19:34: I've been personally investigating this a lot in my career.

00:19:37: You know how much you should invest in brand and I haven't heard like a single answer.

00:19:43: some will tell you it should be fifty-fifty, you know, so you should fifty-fifty invest in brand, but ultimately if you're in early stages of you have a early stage startup, you cannot invest fifty percent in something that could potentially deliver some results in two years, you know, so obviously you have to deliver results much faster.

00:20:02: So my suggestion obviously is to just think what what is what is your goal?

00:20:07: if you need to generate a specific revenue now you cannot afford to invest fifty percent of your budget just in brand.

00:20:14: but i would do it from the very beginning.

00:20:17: you know you have to think about what what.

00:20:19: what is my brand?

00:20:20: what is the value of this brand?

00:20:22: how do i communicate to users?

00:20:24: uh how do i communicate the value of a product to users?

00:20:27: uh spending money on google is the easiest way to spend money or in any investment any cash on google like in one day.

00:20:34: you know you have two million.

00:20:36: if you want you can spend them today on google.

00:20:38: obviously there is a search volume limitation but ultimately for pretty much all of the sectors and niches in the market the search volume is sufficient to bear any amount of cash immediately.

00:20:53: so that's why my suggestion is invest in that as fast as you can, small steps, you know, so it doesn't have to be something big, like big project, but small steps.

00:21:04: So, yeah, as simple as that.

00:21:07: Makes sense.

00:21:08: Let's look into one of the topics you already mentioned earlier, which is GEO or AI search.

00:21:14: And you're also investing into that.

00:21:19: What's, what's something that your currently doing already.

00:21:25: So are you already measuring your visibility in the different models?

00:21:29: Are you tracking the traffic?

00:21:30: What's something like?

00:21:32: that is a starting point for you currently?

00:21:35: Yeah, we're doing a lot.

00:21:37: We have revamped already our inbound strategy this year with the regional marketing director who's responsible for this area.

00:21:47: We are tracking, we have been testing a lot of tools, starting with basics like SEMrush, AI visibility toolkit to some peak AI, utterly AI prompt monitor and many other stuff.

00:22:02: to better understand you know because now finally I think there is a lot of visibility much more visibility.

00:22:10: I don't know how much of it we can trust.

00:22:12: I don't know it would be.

00:22:13: maybe it would be a good question to you by the way.

00:22:17: But there is a lot of information like prompt level, brand mentions, track citations, sentiment analysis, like summaries of negative versus positive sentiment, referrals, tracking, like visibility across different LLMs which also like questionable because you know in many tools I've been seeing random spikes of LLM visibility without any kind of reason and any kind of explanation.

00:22:49: So it's the biggest problem for me, I think, is you don't have visibility of what's happening behind.

00:22:54: So on the back end behind all of that information you're being provided.

00:22:59: So yes, we're tracking a lot.

00:23:01: We are investing a lot in optimizing content for LLMs as well.

00:23:09: We understand that now we need to invest more in brand because ultimately brand, this is what is going to help you to gain more trusted visibility.

00:23:21: We have been testing like was different items like Reddit.

00:23:24: at some point everyone has been started talking that Reddit is like eighty percent of the LLM volume, you know, which is which is not the case anymore.

00:23:35: So I think we're in the position like any other organization trying to be on top of everything.

00:23:42: But there is so much unknown and so much unclear behind the scenes.

00:23:48: like Google, Google algorithm has always been a mystery, even for Google employees.

00:23:55: So now you have even less visibility into what's happening, I think, and how you can actually win one term.

00:24:05: I don't think anyone knows.

00:24:07: You just need to keep investing.

00:24:09: Keep investing time, staying on top of everything.

00:24:12: Yeah, but a good question.

00:24:14: A good question is actually how much you can trust all of the information that is being provided now.

00:24:20: So I'm hearing that you're a little bit skeptical about

00:24:23: it?

00:24:23: A little bit skeptical, yes indeed.

00:24:25: Yeah, okay, get it.

00:24:27: What do

00:24:28: you think?

00:24:29: So I think All the prompt research etc.

00:24:33: you have to treat it more like just an idea of topical coverage.

00:24:39: so you shouldn't think about it that users are actually entering these exact words like we.

00:24:46: previously thought with keywords, but it's more of understanding what an LLM surfaces for different topics and how are the answers structured.

00:24:55: So will it give you a step-by-step checklist for something?

00:25:00: So if you think about, hey, I want to start ranking, renting out my apartment on Airbnb.

00:25:05: what will be the type of answer you get.

00:25:08: If you're thinking more about who can help me manage rental bookings across different platforms, will it immediately suggest providers?

00:25:17: and the better you understand and how an LLM treats different types of prompts, no matter the exact words, the better you know how to structure your content, where to engage, then obviously if you get a better idea of the type of citations that are used, so is it primarily brand owned content from you preferably or from your competitors unfortunately?

00:25:40: or is it more like third party sites or for example for a medical client we're working with like in the medical space?

00:25:47: it's a lot of like high trust publications in this space and.

00:25:55: Rather less so if you're thinking about chat gbt rather less like own content.

00:26:00: but still there are some competitors and then you can try to reverse engineer what they're doing differently maybe to yourself.

00:26:06: so I would try to Always come up with like a thing that's easy to explain for the team because if you Start to fumble around and like tokens and probabilistic answers, etc.

00:26:22: It doesn't help anyone to come up with actionable steps on how to improve visibility and get more mentions of your brand.

00:26:30: Yeah, yeah, I a hundred percent agree.

00:26:33: I think there there is like at least the basic playbook, you know, that you have to apply now to make sure that.

00:26:40: you understand where the where the traffic is coming from what is being fed to the LLM and what is being favored by the LLM.

00:26:49: when it comes to that sentiment that you get as an output which is actually super interesting in the end there is a lot a lot like it's still some kind of a black box ultimately but sometimes I even feel that There is more sense than we used to have.

00:27:09: was Google in a classical way of SEO, you know, yeah, it's been like very.

00:27:15: you can super easily manipulate it and Ultimately, you can get a very completely bullshit result, number one, versus really meaningful, valuable information being deep prioritized and positioned lower because the backlink doesn't have enough trust or anything else.

00:27:41: So yeah, I think this transformation is Ultimately for better, you know, so it's designed to help us and it's helping us in the end, you know.

00:27:50: So we just need to learn how to navigate with it.

00:27:53: agree speaking of navigating.

00:27:56: so You are obviously very progressively minded about embracing the unknown and like that change is the new normal.

00:28:04: but still you also have to Steer a marketing or arc through like some planning cycles.

00:28:12: I don't know if your planning cycle is maybe a month or a quarter, but in some way you have to balance like stability and clarity of direction with embracing the unknown and seemingly everything changes every week.

00:28:26: So how do you balance that?

00:28:28: And also how do you enable the team to not get lost in all the new AI news, etc?

00:28:35: Yeah, that's a good question.

00:28:37: I don't think I'm doing my best with this one, you know, so to be very fair.

00:28:43: Appreciate the honesty.

00:28:45: Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to be honest with myself.

00:28:48: We the planning cycle is high level is more than even a quarter.

00:28:54: So we're trying to plan at least for six months.

00:28:57: What's what we're trying to invest in, what we need to?

00:29:00: what are the key challenges versus opportunities?

00:29:04: we have where we have to invest because if you want to achieve something in six months you have to do it now.

00:29:11: so that's why one month I think it's it would be very short.

00:29:17: so I think we have a direction.

00:29:20: what we're doing much better now having one unified direction for the organization.

00:29:27: so it's not my team only.

00:29:29: Before when I joined I think the big issue was like marketing has been driving in one direction sales has been driving in a similar but sometimes pretty different direction and product has been left elsewhere.

00:29:45: Now it's completely different.

00:29:47: so as the organization we have our set of key indicators that we have to focus on and then we cascade our planning based on these indicators.

00:29:57: Meaning that if we know that we need to achieve these growth targets or we need to reduce like increase the conversion rate by this number, we work together.

00:30:07: So we work together now with the team, with the product team to work on the lifecycle enhancements from starting from acquisition obviously to then retention.

00:30:20: or retention, prevention, I would say, not... cheering prevention, but retention increase.

00:30:28: So that's how we approach planning.

00:30:32: Still, I do believe there is a lot... like this kind of unknown doesn't help much, you know, so... Overall, where the industry is, where the market is, where the economy is at the same time.

00:30:45: So this does not help to get this kind of sense of stability that we had before COVID because it was different.

00:30:53: But we're trying to navigate.

00:30:55: I can do better when it comes to... trying to address all of the concerns and like the challenges, but I think we're trying to do our best as much as possible in these conditions.

00:31:10: Okay, got it.

00:31:12: As I said, I appreciate the honesty.

00:31:13: I think that's not, that's really rare for for leaders at your level.

00:31:19: Speaking of concerns, I recently spoke to the managing director of a big agency actually in the search space.

00:31:29: And he told me that although at like leadership level, they are very progressively minded about AI, one as a channel, but also AI as a tool.

00:31:40: He often sees his teams, for example, the editors, like the content editors, being concerned, concerned about, will this work out for us?

00:31:52: What about my job,

00:31:53: blah, blah, blah.

00:31:53: I

00:31:54: can imagine that also like this is something that with an org you have and the size is just something that you probably have to deal with.

00:32:02: So do you have any suggestions for people on how to embrace your people, empower your people to also like see this change as something that you can also create and design and rather like it's this wave that just comes above you.

00:32:20: I have so so so much I've been thinking about that so much.

00:32:24: you know I'm the person who's watching all of the YouTube videos about how AI is gonna take over all of our jobs and what's coming for us but ultimately I don't think we have to be concerned about replacing being replaced by AI at this like this year or next year I would say you know the horizon of planning and understanding what's gonna come with AI.

00:32:47: I think it's no more than year and a half for now because we don't know what's going to happen in two years but ultimately we even see a lot of organizations have been investing in replacing humans with AI and now they're reversing back you know.

00:33:03: so there is like some kind of a bubble effect that we observe in the industry.

00:33:08: all of the companies like Oracle investing back and forth was met you know trying to increase the value of each other.

00:33:17: I think it's pretty interesting to observe, but ultimately I don't think we need to be concerned about being replaced.

00:33:25: Potentially some of the roles are going to be redundant, so content role probably is going to be one of the first ones who's going to be redundant as the concept.

00:33:34: As the concept in the way it has been designed by legacy means.

00:33:42: In the same time, as a content specialist, now you can be so much more productive, you can deliver like ten times more.

00:33:49: You know, you can deliver ten times more, you can put effort of manually typing content of shaping angles and ensuring you know that the critical thinking and unique angle and point of view is applied to that copy, which Any LLM cannot do, you know, so LLM is the LLM generated content is just the result of is the average is the average of what you are trained on.

00:34:17: But you cannot apply critical thinking to that.

00:34:20: You know with with Chagapiti or any other gen AI.

00:34:24: So that's why I do believe AI now is the massive augmentation of our capability massive augmentation of everything that we do every day.

00:34:33: You know, we have got so much redundant work already and I'm like The potential is limitless, you know, on how much more we can deliver was the same team, was the same time we spent at work, compared to where we were three years or four years ago.

00:34:52: It's like massively.

00:34:54: So that's why... I'm not concerned that we need to replace the team.

00:34:59: We need to keep investing in automation.

00:35:01: We need to keep investing in AI, but thinking about how it helps us with the productivity and the amount of output that we produce rather than thinking, okay, I'm going to replace this person now with, I don't know, the agent or the workflow.

00:35:17: And yeah, I'm going to be publishing twenty times more content, but everyone is going to be doing that.

00:35:23: So this technology is available to everyone.

00:35:25: one now.

00:35:26: So everyone can publish one thousand pages online.

00:35:29: You know, even Samarash, you can do it.

00:35:32: You can like just, it's gonna get you the research of the keywords.

00:35:36: You can do like the full blown blog in one day with the AI generated pictures, AI generated authors or whatever.

00:35:45: But like, you know, like now you have to get creative, you have to understand, you know, how do you actually, how do you actually put human touch and on top of that and to make it unique.

00:36:01: So it's a journey.

00:36:03: What happens in two, three years, I guess no one knows.

00:36:07: Maybe we're going to have the super eye, you know, the super intelligence that will probably cause some effects on the economy.

00:36:16: But if you're smart, and you know how to put AI to your use, you should be good.

00:36:23: You should be safe for now.

00:36:25: Do you already have AI ambassadors or people on the team that are particularly interested and also making progress with AI and then maybe also enabling the team as a whole to move into that direction?

00:36:42: I would say yes.

00:36:44: The biggest problem with marketing is there is no one solution for the marketing team because the use cases are very scattered.

00:36:54: So everything boils down to the data accessibility and the cross-unification of data.

00:37:02: So we do have people who are much more willing and up to using AI.

00:37:07: So the creative team, the community team, I think they're very, very much on top of that.

00:37:13: Obviously the content and the SEO teams.

00:37:16: Some teams, we need to invest more into that areas.

00:37:19: So yeah, for sure we have the ambassadors, we have people like trying to push it across all of the possible use cases.

00:37:28: Yeah, but the biggest problem, there is no one off solution for that.

00:37:32: If you think about the marketing team generally, you know, so starting from email to image generation and then to content development and then maybe to... I don't know.

00:37:45: Automated bidding in paid campaigns.

00:37:48: This is so far from each other.

00:37:51: The data sets are different.

00:37:52: The tools are different.

00:37:56: I think this is actually a big opportunity for someone who's going to create a tool like that, which is going to be able to connect with all of these tools and unify all of the data points.

00:38:08: But it's not there yet.

00:38:10: Okay, but if other marketing leaders thinking about standardization and like enabling the team basically on one AI platform ideally to also be very clear about how they're using it and having maybe brand guidelines already baked in.

00:38:26: Your response would be if I understand it correctly, this is not possible yet.

00:38:30: So rather embrace the scatteredness.

00:38:34: No, I mean.

00:38:36: Other when you say other marketing leaders are trying to unify it like what would be the use case of that unification?

00:38:42: My answer my question would be, you know, yeah content development or Creative development.

00:38:48: Yes for sure, but if you're talking about the marketing team overall the use cases are very Scattered still, you know, so I've been I've been researching for a tool that could could do As much as unified as possible, but I've been struggling to find one either.

00:39:11: I found I don't remember what was the name of it the one solution that was like Enterprise great.

00:39:16: I think we were too small for them.

00:39:18: That has been some kind of similar to what I would envision.

00:39:22: but If you think about everything at once, I don't think it exists.

00:39:28: to be honest

00:39:29: Yeah, I get it.

00:39:31: Maybe I don't know about it.

00:39:32: You tell me.

00:39:34: No, no, no, probably there isn't one yet.

00:39:36: What I'm just hearing is that people are saying, yeah, you know, now we have this specialized AI tool for content workflows, then the graphic team or the creative team wants to have this other special specialized tool for this use case, then the video team wants to have this specialized tool for video editing.

00:39:55: And then I feel like.

00:39:56: Some people draw back to, hey, can't we just use chatGDPT for all of that?

00:40:01: I mean, chatGDPT can write stuff and generate images, and then there's Sora, so this is what I'm hearing.

00:40:07: Yeah, I don't think we can use chatGDPT for everything, no.

00:40:10: You know, like think about email creation or email template generation, you know, you cannot, I mean, you can do the HTML for that, but basically it boils down to the code generation.

00:40:21: I think it's the ChagePT is pretty limited to when you think about all of the possible use cases.

00:40:28: I mean, even Sora, yes, it works, it works okay, but it works much better when you use multiple tools, even for one video creation.

00:40:42: Same with image generation.

00:40:44: So, yeah, I would love to have one unified tool, but I don't think we are there yet.

00:40:52: If a smart founder is listening to this and feels the same, then Go pursue the idea and maybe get Logify as a first pilot client or like MVP client.

00:41:03: Yeah, I'm happy.

00:41:04: I'm happy to be the first client.

00:41:05: Yes.

00:41:06: Nice.

00:41:07: And how about yourself?

00:41:08: Like personally, because I feel like there's a lot of talk also about how like a content marketing manager, etc.

00:41:14: can use AI.

00:41:15: But what about like a VP of marketing?

00:41:17: What are your favorite use cases of AI?

00:41:21: I think I'm trying to automate as much as possible.

00:41:24: I've been actually enjoying the ChagePD agent a lot, the one that interacts with the interfaces, you know, so not necessarily building just the workflow, because, you know, we also have to distinguish the classical workflows with agents who actually can navigate through the context and make decisions in real time, which was, I mean, it's been with... Comet from Perplexity.

00:41:55: and then Chajapiti introduced this like three months ago I guess and then introduced a new browser where you can actually do it.

00:42:02: I love it.

00:42:02: I think you can.

00:42:03: you know, you just give a prompt and respond to all of the LinkedIn messages and it's gonna respond to you on behalf of you or Work with email.

00:42:13: So I think I'm using it primarily for like productivity items, you know We do have as a as a team.

00:42:21: It's not only myself.

00:42:22: We do use different LLM for analytics, you know, to generate reports, maybe generate graphs instead of just using old school reports in Tableau.

00:42:37: So I think it's more about productivity, everyday productivity, but basically that's my, fifty percent of my work, you know, like my work is Eighty percent of meetings and conversations, and then twenty percent of some actually productivity and strategic work.

00:42:59: Makes sense.

00:43:00: So is GPPT Atlas already your standard browser?

00:43:04: No, no, I think from the UX perspective, it's not still there.

00:43:10: Okay, got it.

00:43:11: No, I tried it for seventy two hours.

00:43:14: Also did a LinkedIn post about it.

00:43:15: Found it interesting.

00:43:17: felt some things are not natural.

00:43:19: So if I say to the assistant and so on the sidebar, if I say, hey, please go to XYZ website and do this and that, I have to manually select the agent mode.

00:43:31: So it actually switches to the agent mode where I feel like if my prompt and my indication is very clear that I want it to act, it should naturally do it.

00:43:39: And this is something where I feel like this, this still involves too much.

00:43:44: active decision making from my side to make it really this like extra layer of convenience.

00:43:51: So this is one idea.

00:43:53: I had something else, but you know, it's like there's so much going on.

00:43:57: I just I just lost the other things, but that felt most unnatural to me.

00:44:02: Yeah, it makes sense.

00:44:03: I think for me, the biggest struggle with productivity now is the presentations.

00:44:08: I didn't find the tool who could do a decent presentation for me.

00:44:13: There are so many tools just designed for generating presentations, but I've never found one that would actually listen to me and do what I ask you to do.

00:44:24: So if you know something, I would love any recommendation.

00:44:28: Did you try Gamma?

00:44:30: I tried so many, to be honest.

00:44:32: It's like

00:44:32: GAWMA.

00:44:36: It seemed to be Super solid and the founder was on Lenny's podcast a week or two ago.

00:44:45: So and it seemed intriguing.

00:44:47: I haven't looked into it more deeply yet.

00:44:49: But let me know if you try it.

00:44:52: If you haven't tried it yet.

00:44:54: How is it going for you?

00:44:56: Yeah, I'm the creator of the presentation.

00:44:59: Okay.

00:44:59: Yeah, sounds nice.

00:44:59: I will take a look.

00:45:02: Okay.

00:45:03: Happy to hear how it's going.

00:45:06: I'd like to focus on one other aspect, but also obviously connected to the AI search or like the AI space.

00:45:14: Because when I talk to people, it's a little bit connected also to the whole prompt monitoring thing.

00:45:20: They struggle to get a grasp on how their prospects or customers are using AI for research.

00:45:28: So have you done anything particular to understand how your future users or prospects are using AI so you better understand where to focus your marketing efforts on.

00:45:42: You mean in terms of our product because there is a separate conversation of research and product usage.

00:45:51: I'm thinking about how a potential future Logify user is using AI so you better understand what they're doing with chativity and what they're researching about the space and if they're researching about the best solutions for this and that so you better know where to focus your efforts with like AI search marketing

00:46:13: marketing efforts.

00:46:15: Okay, makes sense.

00:46:16: There's this whole separate conversation how hosts use AI for We

00:46:21: save this for the next for the update episode.

00:46:24: That's a long one.

00:46:25: Yeah When it comes to like marketing part, I yeah, we have been we have been doing the research on like the prompt analysis overall.

00:46:36: That's that's where.

00:46:37: that's where I said, you know, I was not sure if we how much we could trust the information but it seemed that one that part not the sentiment analysis necessarily seems solid.

00:46:49: It makes sense, you know, so we have been trying to cluster different types of prompts to understand, you know, where to focus.

00:46:56: And I don't think we have, honestly, we have seen any surprises, you know, so yes, it's easier to work with prompts instead of keywords as we used to do.

00:47:06: Now you understand some context and maybe you can better understand the potential a cycle and journey of that of that specific cohort of users.

00:47:15: but there's.

00:47:16: it's nothing like comprehensively new you know.

00:47:19: so instead of best PMS for vacation rentals you know it would be.

00:47:25: what is the best property management software or system for vacation rental hosts as an example?

00:47:31: so it's just the expanded version of the clusters you had in search.

00:47:35: maybe some insights we did have you know.

00:47:38: so we have not been optimizing to some specific clusters that much.

00:47:45: Now we are, but yeah, we have been doing that research.

00:47:48: That's where we have been testing all of the tools.

00:47:52: So basically, most of the PROMs users are typing into Tratchability are more or less a little bit longer, long tail search queries.

00:48:02: Yeah, I think when it comes to our ICP, the profile of users, it's more long tail.

00:48:08: Yes.

00:48:09: Got it.

00:48:10: Nice.

00:48:11: Not all of the LLAMs.

00:48:14: They're pretty similar in the end.

00:48:16: Do you have a preferred LLAM or a preferred AI tool?

00:48:20: Myself.

00:48:21: Yes?

00:48:22: Yes, it's a GPD for sure.

00:48:23: Okay, just because it's the Swiss Army knife?

00:48:26: Yes, I think so.

00:48:28: Have you

00:48:28: tried it?

00:48:29: I tried it.

00:48:30: It knows what to expect from me.

00:48:32: We have a very... It knows... I'm very demanding out of it, you know.

00:48:40: So it knows that it can not give me any kind of bullshit.

00:48:45: Nice.

00:48:46: I always like to make this podcast way very, very authentic, but B also very practical and actionable.

00:48:54: And you already like delivered a lot in that sense, but I'd like to ask you, if you think about fellow marketing leaders, also maybe in the SaaS, in the tech space, and if you would have to give them like two to three practical pieces of advice, also maybe with teams of your size, especially connected to search, AI search, the whole AI shift, what would it be?

00:49:26: Yeah, it's a it's a good question.

00:49:27: I think naturally Naturally, you would have an answer probably based on this conversation, but to summarize Keep investing into brand activities.

00:49:39: starting small first of all, you know, so don't think about AI searches as just a technical SEO or geo Where you just optimize a specific piece of content towards the LLM but think about who's going to be publishing content about you if you invest in some kind of long-term relationship with your influencers, brand ambassadors.

00:50:03: If you don't have any start small, think about who are the people who can promote you.

00:50:09: Do you have any kind of referral program that you can build?

00:50:13: Everything, all of that investment is going to be reflected in GEO and search, ultimately.

00:50:21: Simultaneously obviously invest in old school, you know, so you need to still generate content to appear anywhere, you know, so without content you're.

00:50:32: You're not gonna magically appear.

00:50:34: if you invest in brand, you know brand is a very broad concept.

00:50:37: also.

00:50:38: People like a lot of the marketing leaders keep repeating that.

00:50:42: but brand ultimately, you know, it has to be decomposed into specific areas and actionable items.

00:50:51: So that's the first one and the second one invest in automation.

00:50:56: you know, so invest now.

00:50:58: more is the message to myself as well, you know, keep investing in automation.

00:51:01: This is the foundation of you being happier and more successful, more proficient in six months or in one year from now.

00:51:08: If you if you're not doing that now, you're gonna you're gonna be either left behind or regret it a lot, you know, so automate as much as possible, map out the use cases that you can automate with AI across different teams, and then try to try to automate, try to unify were possible, as we discussed.

00:51:26: If it's not possible, at least try to empower the teams with the tools that they need.

00:51:31: If you calculate the investment in the tool versus the operational efficiency gains, this is very helpful in the end.

00:51:38: So there is a lot of benefit towards that kind of investment.

00:51:43: Yeah, third is super basic, I think, you know, that talk style.

00:51:48: just prioritize, you know, prioritize, have a couple of priorities for at least some kind of measurable part of the future and just do something good, you know, if you cannot do anything good, you're gonna fail.

00:52:03: So at least some areas you have to, you have to do better than your competitors or you have to do better than you have been doing that before.

00:52:12: So I think that's it, super simple probably.

00:52:18: Probably I would have more, but if summarizing something more practical, I would stick to these.

00:52:26: Awesome.

00:52:26: Very nice.

00:52:28: I have one last surprise question.

00:52:31: I always started asking this and it was always very insightful when I did.

00:52:37: So if you think about our conversation now today, what is something that we haven't talked about?

00:52:45: we should have talked about?

00:52:46: I mean, we haven't talked about so much, you know, so I think we could be talking for hours probably.

00:52:55: There's one specific area.

00:52:57: Something that's important to you where you feel like, ah, we missed that.

00:53:00: I don't think we missed that much.

00:53:03: First of all, thank you so much for the conversation.

00:53:07: I really love the way you structured the follow-up questions and the overall the question structure.

00:53:16: Maybe one area that it's not I would be, you know, the best expert in that, but the technical part of GEO, I think this is something that is very interesting for users and probably would be a nice follow-up conversation, maybe.

00:53:34: You know, so how do you, how do you build out your tech stack specifically to make sure that you first like you automate as much as possible and second you understand how to track your results?

00:53:48: you know so text-to-face for me every time every podcast that I watch I try to get something from it in terms of what I can either test.

00:54:00: And typically, the most useful part is the tools.

00:54:03: So the tools and real feedback from users about specific tools.

00:54:07: So I think it could be a good part for a follow-up conversation or for your next guest.

00:54:13: Awesome.

00:54:13: Thanks so much.

00:54:16: I really enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate also your feedback on it.

00:54:20: If people felt like it was very interesting to follow you and they want to learn more about what you're doing, what Logify is doing, what's best to follow you around?

00:54:32: I think LinkedIn.

00:54:33: I wouldn't say I'm the most public person on LinkedIn.

00:54:37: I just don't have time to properly think about myself and the person who's sharing anything.

00:54:46: But I would suggest follow Logify.

00:54:49: if you're anyone planning to have a vacation rental or you're having one, follow Logify.

00:54:56: And in the meantime, I'm going to try to be more active on LinkedIn, sharing some real life knowledge.

00:55:02: Awesome.

00:55:03: I think it's still helpful for people to know if you think about a fellow marketing leader from an organization that feels like it would be nice to exchange just to know where to connect.

00:55:15: Feel free, anyone feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

00:55:18: if there are any questions.

00:55:20: I'm going to be happy to personally address them.

00:55:23: Awesome.

00:55:24: Vladimir, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:55:26: Really appreciate it and also for sharing so much insights.

00:55:29: I wish you personally all the best and also Logify.

00:55:32: I feel like you guys are pretty well equipped for the future, although there's a lot of unknown, but since you embrace the unknown, it seems you're very well prepped.

00:55:43: So thanks so much for coming on today.

00:55:46: Of course.

00:55:46: Thank you for the conversation.

00:55:48: Enjoy.

00:55:48: Enjoy the conversation and have a nice week.

00:55:52: You too.

00:55:53: See you around.

00:55:54: See you.

00:55:54: Take care.

00:55:55: Bye.