Fantasy ICP 🦄 | E113 with Ada Mockute Jaime

Is your ICP actually an ICP… or is it just “women aged 25 to 45” in a trench coat? 😅
 In this episode of Blame It On Marketing, Emma and Ruta are joined by Ada, CMO of the Year in Lithuania and marketing leader at Norcurrent, the biggest Baltic mobile gaming company, to talk about ideal customer profiles and why most companies still get them painfully wrong.

We get into what ICPs really are, how gaming uses customer behaviour to understand value, and why B2B marketers need to stop confusing personas, demographics, target audiences and actual profitable customer segments.

Marketing confession of the episode:
 Ada once billed a client £1 million instead of £100,000. A tiny extra zero. A very large panic.

We get into:
 ✅ What an ICP actually is: the customers who bring the most mutual value
 ✅ ICP vs target audience vs persona — and why mixing them up causes chaos
 ✅ Why your ICP should not live only in marketing
 ✅ How gaming uses behaviour, retention and spend to identify “whales”
 ✅ Why usage data should be part of every B2B SaaS ICP
 ✅ The big B2B problem: marketing often doesn’t get enough product or adoption data
 ✅ How to find your ICP: start with revenue, look for patterns, then interview customers
 ✅ Why “we can sell to everyone” usually means wasted budget
 ✅ Buyer vs user: why the person who signs the contract isn’t always the person who drives retention
 ✅ How customer service, product, sales and marketing should all use ICP insights
 ✅ Why retention data and usage signals can help you spot the customers worth keeping

If your company still thinks an ICP is “anyone with budget,” this one’s for you.

Like, subscribe, and comment with the worst ICP you’ve ever been handed.

#B2BMarketing #ICP #MarketingStrategy #SaaSMarketing #CustomerResearch #ProductMarketing #MarketingLeadership #AIinMarketing

Transcript

0:00

hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Blame It on Marketing. We are super excited to have Ada with us today. she is the CMO of the year Lithuania, which is very cool. I didn't even have to pull any Lithuanian strings to have this happen. It just it just came to us, so it's very exciting. we are gonna be talking about ICPs today. and I wish we didn't have to talk about them anymore because I wish just everyone, you know, got it and did it and it was fine. But that is not the case. So we will be doing a dedicated episode on ICPs, which I'm excited to talk about because I think we're all very passionate about that. so yeah, Ada, please introduce yourself. So my name is Ada. I'm from Lithuania. it sounds like a dating profile. Anyway. So no, so I've been in marketing in C level positions for 15 years. Now I'm 25 myself. So yeah, and I'm at the moment working for Norcurrent, which is the biggest Baltic mobile game company. We have about 800 million downloads, about 15 million monthly players. Super dynamic, super interesting, super lot of data. And overall, I worked in many different industries from finance to aviation and different services and at the moment gaming is probably one of the most dynamic things I ever experienced. So when I used to say never boring, now I know what it means. I manifested it. Never boring. Excellent. I'm very excited to talk about ideal customer profiles and gaming. But before we do that, let's talk about marketing gossip adder. You can't come on this podcast unless you share with us something that you have royally fucked up. And if it did change your life, tell us how it changed your life. You might have just been like, I've never talked about this ever again. Thanks guys. no. It's actually well because you know, I got a sneak peek to this question. I was like, I never cause I'm perfect. But yet I was thinking actually what happened. it's not like a one-time thing. I was actually thinking the way my personality has been before. certain that when I was a young professional marketeer and very big ego-driven, my you know, my opinion's the right one and everything. And then I had babies and I wanted a maternity leave. And you see, like ego ego kind of had been healed because nobody cares when you're out and there's no big opinions and your life kind of you know, becomes your life and at work nobody cares. So it changed me a lot as a person. So I didn't kind of fuck up, I would say, you know, kids kids are good. but it was very interesting to see it I do love my kids the statement. Don't kids mama loves you. No, I'm kidding. no, I mean I love them. But uh They're so into their marketing podcasts, right? are s I'm raising the new generation. No, but I think overall the the the fuck up part is my young self, the way I had the attitude, the way I thought like have to break the walls, the lack of and of course, you know, it did it kind of not horribly, but when I look back at myself, I'm like, you young, stupid, arrogant girl, look at you. So that was one thing. But if you want something more practical, in my first job in MindShare, I was working in London in a global media agency. I billed a client one million instead of hundred thousand pounds. So that's that's a good sadly was corrected I did not make that much money for the company. I wish I would, but it was a big drama. So here you go. nothing like an extra zero. is just, it's very easy. It's easily done. m it was? It's the points and the commas, you know? Which is which? Well, you know, a little bit there, a little bit there. Maths, it's not my strong suit, so yeah. That's why I always use a spreadsheet. oh can't say maths is not your strong suit and then use a spreadsheet. I don't think those two like if you don't do maths you don't do spreadsheet. You know? Yeah. I do also, I really like your sort of first part of your confession, Ada, because I think that is something that I think a lot of us grapple with, especially as we're getting older. And it sounds like you had kind of like a senior position quite young and 22, yeah. And so that is part of it, isn't it? You kind of feel like you've got to go in there and kick some doors down and punch some people in the face. And as you get bit older, you're like, maybe I don't need to punch everyone in the face. It becomes it's it's you kumbaya, my lord it sounds, but it becomes like it's a common goal. At this point, I don't have to prove anything to anyone. My success is company's success. And it takes a while I think it takes a while for all of us to understand, like if I shine but the team doesn't shine, it's not worth it. If we shine but the result is not there. So it's you know, it's a common good and it's difficult. maybe also what helped me now is the environment I am in, which is more kind of a appreciative of that and if you're in a hardcore corporate where you need to, you know, bunch shoulders and everyone's like, it's a fight, it's difficult. But I think the work quality in the end in the right environment that's what matters. I like it. We need some zen on this podcast. Sometimes we're a bit too like, yeah, fuck everyone. it, no, no, realistically don't. Yeah, I I I just started working with somebody that I've known for years, but the last time we worked together I was like twenty one. And I'm just like a whole different human being now because I'm thirty two. and we had a call where I was like quite sassy, not sassy, but like quite direct and quite like inquisitive of an agency we were talking to. And he was like, she's like Brutus back. brutal Ruta and I was like, she never went away. I've just developed other personality aspects, you know, like I can bring her back, but you know, there's there's other things to work with now and we've just had a good laugh about it. So yeah. Yeah. No. No. No exactly. Well, wonderful. So I'm gonna call myself Bada from now on. Bada bada. it. Yeah. Works on two levels as well, not just brutal but also, you know, like bad bitch, badder. Yeah. From now on I'll be like today in the meeting, it's Ada or Bada you choose. Cool. I love it. I love it. So, let's start with like really stupid basics, right? what is an ICP actually meant to be? So I'll talk from my perspective. I always take a thing that I'm not lecturing, I'm not a academic professor. So for me it's our c the Clients that bring us the most mutual value. I perceive it like this. So a group of clients that brings us as a group the biggest value. And I think a big mistake a lot of times we do is we confuse it with demographics or personas or target audience, and that's definitely not that. And a lot of times it actually kind of a pins the problem. It's like, no, but we are targeting this to 25 year old women, and that is not ICP. That is your target audience, which is not necessarily a good thing, and it's very broad and not necessarily necessarily very valuable. So I would describe it like that I think. Yeah. some of the aspects you would be looking for? So if you're trying to evaluate who's the most valuable both ways, what are the aspects you're you're focusing on? So overall, you know, I I wanna kinda wanna say don't lean just on data, but firstly you lean on data. So you look at the people who bring you the most monies, because we all like the monies. And then basic math. Uh well, you find the monies, you look for patterns. you look for the patterns which are which are repet repetitive and that you can apply to say, okay, well these ten clients, saying minimal for example, or whatever numbers, have something in common. And that's how you start building the ICP kind of groups because it can be number of ICPs on different levels. But basically you start from the data and you go backwards into building a client base. And a lot of times these are maybe not even the clients we have right now, but you can look into like lifetime value and acqu acquisition costs and retention costs and see well actually this would be my client because that's where the money lies. Yep, absolutely. And then what's your view on who owns the ideal customer profile? obviously traditionally it's something, it feels like it gets filed away in a drawer somewhere, doesn't it? Along with all the other marketing stuff, personas, et cetera. But when I've seen an ICP work the best, it's been where the product team have actually kind of been the ones that sort of own it with marketing input and data, but they own it because they're trying to build for the ICP, right? But what's your view on that? Do you think that's for us to own or do you feel like it works when someone else does? It has to be everywhere. In my opinion, it has to be everywhere. So if you put in a marketing, it's gonna be left as a targeting tool because there's only so much we can do in marketing. We can use it to perform the messages, sort things and so on. In product, definitely, because when you know which people bring you the most money, what are the behaviors, what are their needs, likes, economics, and so on, you can build much more for that audience. customer support. If your target audience are the best, are 90-year-old ladies who need to live in Canada and like beaver. You're probably not gonna go like hey stop you know. It's very niche, I like it. As it should be. I well, I'm not judging those ladies who like, you know, knitting and beavers. But the idea also what the process a lot of times is if you have the group that you identify, it's good also to take some individuals you can interview to understand the patterns of the group, how to communicate, what do they need, what problem are you solving? Because a lot of times, you know, there's no problem solvement, there's not a product, or the product is like we're better 'cause we are more pretty. So which is difficult in gaming 'cause we, you know, we ultimately all s solve kind of the same problem. But if you're selling services or goods It's these things should be in absolutely every department. Maybe accounting can live without it, I would say. Do you love it when the CFO knows the ICP? Then it always makes your life easier. Like I've, you know, you're in a meeting, you're like, oh, oh, hello. You know, do you? Fabulous. we call them well of course we call them the whales. So these are the big spenders. Yes, they're called the whales. So not about the size, but the amount of money they spend. So what we try to do is of course, depending on a game, sometimes you have a list of like fifty people or a hundred people, whatever. These are like super big spenders. But again, you look at the patterns. Why are they playing? What are they doing in the game? What qua like what's the motivation? Is it the show of how good it is? Is it the creative part? So and then you start also basing on those because you understand how much profit does the big They bring and how much this casual player brings. And our CFO definitely knows what the whale is. So I love that. Maybe we need to start introducing this router into B2B SaaS. We're going after the whales guys. It's it's interesting for me now we're working with for example Chinese with China with social media and the different wordings they have for different things. So for example they it's not really to ICP but just fun names, so they list their audiences of KOL, key opinion leaders. So there's the head, the ones that have the most following, there's the neck, there's the waist, there's the crown, there's the tail, and this is like depending on stuff. Yeah, 'cause we go like, you know, micro medium. They have layers and they all know about it so so I'm laughing at my team like you're gonna be my head and you're gonna be my tail so It's I never like obviously we all talk about marketing in a fairly westernized English first way. So we all kind of use the same words, but obviously in a in a whole different market with a whole different language, they all have different like metaphors for different groups, etc. So yeah, that's that's actually really interesting. so I the other question that I actually wanted to ask, so as you mentioned, you kind of were an agency and then you've worked in several different sectors, B to B, B to C. has working in gaming changed how you perceive I C P or has it changed like how much you appreciate it because it's kind of different, I assume, than normal B to B? I think ICP overall is at least in Lithuania at the moment, is is not very much used at all. I think it's it's still baby steps. we have target audiences and and a good example, you know, it's always easier to talk about others than ourselves. we had lunch with one with a head of communication for one of the biggest telecommunications company in Lithuania and they're talking about their issues and of course me being stupid I give them a lot of free advice 'cause you know, the coffee. but I'm like, you know, 'cause they have problems With with customer service and the personalized offers, and and I'm like, okay, but you know, what's your client's LTD? Like, what's your he's like, I'm not sure. I'm like, is it cheaper to retain? Is it cheaper to get new clients? Why are you pushing for new? He's like, I don't know. I'm like, so who's who's who's your good client? I'm like, you're just like, yeah, we've been pushed to have a lot of new clients, but you don't know what's the the value in that financially. So I think overall a lot of companies, and I worked in finance stuff, you look at the what's your audience again demographically, where they live, what kind of basic need they might have, but you don't understand what's the money behind it. So in mobile gaming it's an interesting thing because we track absolutely everything, you know. Yeah. day return two day retention activity. So absolutely everything, but the fun thing is that we track depersonalize, at least our company. So we don't know if you're a man or a woman. We only know the closest mobile internet tower next to your house. We don't even know where you live. So it's very depersonalized, but we track your behavior. And based on that, our success of the product of our user acquisition is all based on your behavior. And then we see patterns of which we build the the client. So for me, actually, probably it's the first company where we actually even without fully understanding we use ICP because it comes so naturally you don't you don't even go like this is ICP like no this is a whale this is uh because you know you you can create ICP based on behavior for example we have different types of monetization people who are purchasing in the app and people who are playing and grinding hours by watching ads and based on those already have two groups of patterns and their behaviors and what they need so one needs more app more advertising and app so we can build more opportunities there. Another one needs no apps, needs subscriber models and so on. So even the product is built depending on that. So but when we started talking about ICP I was like, my God, do we do that? I'm like, do because we we don't go you know with a flag of like ICP ICP and I'm like of course we just don't name it. So I think now it's the first company where we actually do it very kind of detailed and targeting for that and learning and building new products for that and even taking that out to community management and what we're doing outside the game. that's what the learning here is for everyone else is because you guys are doing it intrinsically because of the behavior of the people playing the games and it would be good for people like in our industry to see it that way like there are there is you know most tech in particular because Ruta and I work predominantly with B2B tech you know there is usage behavior there are patterns there are those things but we never I would almost go as far as saying never use that in an ICP. Like because it sits with marketing and we so rarely get that usage information or even adoption behavior, all of that sort of stuff. But that is really the key. think if you're in tech, if you're not in tech, I think you've got different. don't get the data about adoption? very rarely. It's like it's like shit data. It's like conversion rates, which is not really like behavior data. But that's the thing, is like for me, I am a strong believer in the loop overall and it's like, you know, marketing looping to the product and the only way is like 'cause if you again, now I understand much more when I'm in gaming, but like my user acquisition journey can impact their retention because I if I bring not the right ones, I can get you I was laughing. You need clients? I'll give you ten thousand clients now. But if are they gonna stay? Are they gonna purchase? Are they gonna adapt? What's the so the fact that you don't get a the you know, the those who I'm shook, I'm shook. really... most like I can not most, that's that's a bad word. There's a lot of product teams in B2B tech that don't even look at the analytics themselves. They just build whatever the fuck they want to build. So like Yeah. Yeah. They kind of make a lot of assumptions about what people they think people want without really ever validating it. It's bit like the Wild West. I always say also to my team who are like working because we do a lot like the amount of creatives and advertising and we have like ridiculous amounts or actions we're testing out and they're like, yeah, but doesn't like I don't like it. I'm like, are you the client? No. We we don't it's the same the same problem, like the basic example to any kind of BTB you're gonna be watching, we do TikTok and it works for us. And last year was one of the most spending channels. The TikToks that work are ridiculous, but like just like bzong cause bad. Some of them are horrible. And some of our you know, management or other is like, this is shit. I'm like, are you on TikTok? No. That's about that. That's about that. So it's the same. It's like you need to like when you create product, in my opinion, when you do marketing, you think about mess is not, and that may be another thing I learned for the stepping out of the bitch age. It's it's not me. I'm not the client. It's not for me. It's about what works in the end, and what works is based on numbers. And now in marketing, that that's the pain point for me that we can measure almost everything. we're gonna send this episode to people later. Like I I feel it. I can feel it. Just like go watch this. Then talk to me. don't talk to us. I actually think from now on when we go into a new business route, we should be like, unless you've got usage data, I'm not gonna work for you. Yeah, what's happening there guys? What's going on? I'm yeah, I'm about to start a a contract and I think we're gonna revamp the trial process, which I now I'm very like inspired slash cognizant of all the things that I want from this conversation to be worked in there and the data that we want, so I'm I'm excited. so obviously you guys are using ICP like so intrinsically you don't even call it that, you don't need to talk about it. Can you can you give us like a practical example? of something that you've done based on that that you're kind of proud of and that you thought was a very good experiment or very good outcome. Yes. took me a moment. so for example, again, for me now For us, a lot of things come back from the data from outside within. It's not we're sitting and we're generating, so you kind of have eyes and then test it out. So if we're talking, for example, from marketing side, we had a TikToker who created a little video playing our game really, really fast, like crazy level fast. It had some traction. We did some whitelisting for for the B2B people. It's when you pay money from somebody's flow, so we push kind of organic content. This little beautiful Indonesian lady. has now 900 million views but what happened out of that yes yes with that popular but what happened out of that and what we started doing is we she created a community of people who are like that who are moms staying at home working and they're playing the game we started seeing what they need we started pushing you know build kind of an audience based on her and her community because we saw the people around her who were playing and started streaming themselves out of this we have like 10 15 hardcore streamers and Indonesia and year on year we grew 683 percent if I'm not mistaken because again we started putting money we started you using producer position but we didn't before like we wouldn't go like Indonesia is the place to put money in a mobile gaming. It's like not you know boom. And out of that she formed a community. Out of that, we analyzed how much you know what are the purchases it worth because same thing can happen with all due respect in India, but The money value is not gonna be there. And so this is an example where you kind of well look, of course it was kind of you can say it was easy because we had a success story and so on, but it can be done the same way in a B2B. You have some clients who are high power usage and you see good data, you go like, Why we? Why we and not others? What are why are we better for you? And out of that you can build and see what's the pattern. Because a lot of times, again, people come and they're like, this is the product because I I am on the end of a lot of sales calls or pitches, or I have a next one. Tool that's just gonna change your life. And they sell me things that I don't need, but in that process, I hear I'm like, but I actually do you do this and this? And they're like, Yeah, we do. So this way, like understand your best financially clients, see why they're choosing you, and then go from there and try to see what you can build around a similar company. So it's kind of a D2C example, but it can be reapplied with very good outcome. I think that's a really interesting also kind of I don't want to say cautionary tale because it's a good thing. But you know, sometimes you have data outliers when you're doing your thing and it's very easy to just kind of plow on and do the thing that you plan to do and not look at these like little things that are happening that you might not notice before. And actually, you know, this has ended up being a great geography for you guys and a great community for you guys. But if you didn't pay attention to that video that did well, but like it wasn't, you know, amazing. yeah a lot of people would ignore that right? so like talking about some of the things that people get wrong when it comes to an ideal customer profile is they.. one of the big ones is they're like i can sell this to anyone like and i'm sure you must get that in gaming all the time like everyone will play this game and it's like well that's just not not the reality that's just not gonna happen I wouldn't like we we also know from like around social media and social sport and stuff, we understand that for example our games are more female targeted and there's a different but again, there's a different need. Like there's Men more again, don't go in like not to go into stereotypes, but men, you know, play more for strategy or kind of a some kind of it it's just different needs. We have also a lot of men playing, but the majority is females and w we definitely definitely not everybody's gonna play, not everyone's gonna use and and no shoe fits everybody and I know for me the simple motivation in the end is always the PL and that's why I don't understand when people are not thinking about it because the amount of money again Simple simple magic. So if we're putting I don't know, one million euros into the global marketing, right? It puts little drops all over the place. But if you know that that now has traction and that has value, you put the same amount of money in one, the the return was will be totally different. So for me it's just simple, straight math. Yeah. yeah, I really wish more people would think like that. Yeah. We'll have that for you. We will we will push that for you if you need us to. Um yeah. Yeah. working. if you were gonna start like so if you're working at a company that's already quite well established there's maybe perhaps a little bit of reticence about icps you know maybe there is that like oh we consult everybody and you're a marketer and you're listening to this and go i just really want us to have an icp where would you start So we start with the boring part, the data. Identify where you know sort by most income. Whoop. You see you have the list of most income. And then I said, look for the patterns. Look for the patterns, whether it is I don't know, industry, I'm just ballparking now, but try to look about deeper, not only like demographics or but just a little bit deeper. What's if it's for example B2B software, you know what specifics of the tool are they using? How oftenly? What is the paid plan? Like how many people work in the company, which markets to and because you need to go into a bit of Nancy Drew detective thing, it's like why are they paying most money here? Then ideally, because it's It's still a lot of human impact. You take couple if you can and you have a short talk and say, So why are you happy? Why do you choose not us? What are the benefits? What are the best things about us? What are the worst things? What would you like to change? And then based on that you already have your first ICP. This is the you know the most valuable. Same way you can do with a smaller income to understand what what could you do to maybe grow it? But ideally, this is for sales and for marketing. Then you know how to which audience to approach because you already have your group. You can select your markets, you can select your companies, you can select even the people, even think about the logic. The simple thing, and I have worked with again many tools and SaaS and stuff. Are you selling to a company CEO? Are you selling to Some kind of manager. It's a different process. Was it a face to face sale? Was it how did the sale happen? What's you know? These are the touch points because the conversation, if you talk to search and sell or to me as a marketing manager, are different conversations, and the sales message is different and positioning is different. And so, understanding these things and the patterns of the groups, you can group your marketing and again then measure. what you get out of it, you know, what's how much to invest where. Maybe it's worth to do a very good party for the whales, let's call them. you know, and then you will have a big re you know, r revenue from there. Or so first look at the data, identify the groups, identify the patterns, and then dig deep into the whole client touch point. How did it happen? How they came, who you're talking to, what's the communication, talk to them if you can because a lot of data is there. And sometimes you think they're buying us because of X, and it's not true. True. They're probably buying you because of totally different reason that you solve. And what's the pain point that you're solving? Because at the moment for any SaaS, especially in business, you have to solve something. otherwise you're just an extra tool that it's expensive and nobody needs. One of the one of the I guess difficulty sometimes with SaaS is that you are selling to one person, but the user group is a whole different group of people. And then obviously if you're looking at usage data, the the two hopefully are split out, but like you're gonna have a lot more usage data typically than you are gonna have like buyer data. Have you had an exper like have you had a similar experience and kind of what were your takeaways from both of those data sets? Well, we don't because we you know, not a group thing. So at the moment it's like the direct to consumer. But I think I think overall, well, if you're selling to one person it's the first one to comment, right? But the retention is made on the on the group. So I would say again start with like what's the main issue and what you know, 'cause when I do or train or help people to do sales, I go into like, okay, you're talking to us, okay, who else are you talking to? And people always say 'cause they think you're gonna get a discount. No. It's like, no. And it's like and what are the features? Why would you like them and not us? What's missing? What's you know 'cause The the sale made again is the person, it can be bur like personal relationship, it can be some whatever points you tickle and that works for them. But the retention is in the group. So I think it's very important to get feedback from the group. maybe that could be a system, you know. You get these, but they're very annoying. The email like, How do you like us, rate us? Blah blah blah. But um but even Google now does these things whereas a team traveling around Europe talking to the teams like To extend the team, like what's working, what's not, what would you differently? So you have to also talk to the team and get feedback as much as you can directly. Because when the group is happy and something's working, then the salesperson would be like, I brought a good thing, everyone's happy, let's continue. So and also it's all in the end, it's all about the value. Because you know, in business, yes, there's some tools that you forget to unsubscribe. But mostly you you know, every single month I get the invoice for million tools we use. I go like, mm, did we really? you is the team using and actually there's tools that I use, but my team is not. And because it's a team subscription I cut them. I'm like, okay, so my team sees no value. That's it. I don't know if that answers the question, but No, no, definitely. I think it's one of those things as well where I'd say that is where your usage data is so critical as well in like forming the relationship with like in our case, maybe it's an admin, someone who's an admin versus a user. If you don't have that usage information, you can't feed that back to the admin because sometimes the admin in some weird cases hates the platform, but the users love it. That happens. And then they want to keep it, but you want to get rid. Like it could be the same for you, Ada. Like you could have your whole team using something but you hate it. But if they're all using it and you could see that, you would keep it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. like when you're thinking of retention and actually s scoring what a successful client is in a successful ICP, the probably the speed of uptake and the feature usage from the users is gonna be a really good indication of whether that client is the right client, even if like the admin seems a bit weird for you or the company seems a little weird. Maybe there's something within that to like, you know, health score or whatever, whatever CS wanna do with that. Hundred percent and also again, me and my money is but to attract a new customer it's much more expensive than to keep an old one. If you track user data, you see red flags, the team involvement's dropping. Out of fifteen active users that have accounts, ten are you are using. You can go back and say, Hey, what's not working? It's again, it's we are nowadays not inventing bicycles. We have very little differentiation in every tool we have. It's like we're all pretty much selling the same with a with a different package and you one at For something. So we're fighting for very little attention. So customer service, identifying problems before the best service is always when they solve their problem before you go and complain about it. So data usage is another thing. You can do it for a smaller group. Again, identify your ICP, track those mainly, and you see some kind of you know red flags, you go and be like, Hi, what's up? What's happening? Can we help? And you're gonna keep the client, I promise. And it's gonna be much cheaper than to get anyone. So Agree more. amen. So Ada, before we let you go, we love to talk about marketing gossip. So if you've got anything you want to share with us that you either hate or love that's happening in marketing right now. you know what I hate? I hate. So I love AI. But I'm I'm a big AI tourist. I to like use all the tools and but what I hate is all the 97 million experts now who are telling you how to optimize for AI. Joe, just make a website www.yourbrandnameplusreviews.com and you're gonna it's like guys for a thousand years I'm older than Google, like we never knew fully how Google operated. Like I started my career in search engine optimization and it's always a shadow thing. You kinda know the main things you have to do, but there's always something you don't know, because if we would all know, it wouldn't work. all do it, yeah. Exactly. So what makes you think that optimizing for, you know, LLMs and AI is gonna be ten times more easy where you just put a little website? Yes, some things are very kind of basic and logic that you need a lot of PR articles, you need like high scoring websites, so but those, you know, experts that are like, just do this, just buy this, it's like no. And I I hate that people Buy it and they they come to me and it's the same thing. It's like, we're just gonna do this website. Like my brand is the best, and the AI is gonna think that. Yeah. you know, we're dealing with like billion dollar AI models, like they probably are a little a little more advanced than that, just saying. No. no. Ruta Ruta is wrong. Va va Ruta is the best marketing in a person in the world dot com and that's it. And it's how it's gonna work. So that's my hate. Love it. yeah, couldn't agree more. Also, you know, it is whenever there's a new thing, there's always, you know, the market of people selling the expertise and the new thing that no one has expertise in. So yeah, I think this has happened for like everything in marketing, inbound, personal branding, whatever the whatever the take is in that moment. now? What do they call it? All bound? All b fuck knows. Yeah. And if we're talking about B2B, and that's my wishes to all the people selling, turn off the down damn automatization automatizations and automations for sales Jesus Christ. That ten emails when you don't answer and they just go, it's a rainy day, but let's stop it's like We we know. We know LinkedIn, you're just out we know. And yeah, so that's another thing, is like I understand it's hard to sell and I but let's not target every three days on count, you know, 'cause if I didn't answer first fifteen messages, it's not gonna it's not gonna change. m just that thing, isn't it, as well, of clearly not understanding your ICP. Therein lies the, uh... Yeah. pitches of like, why did you think to message me about this? Or like or it'd be like I one of my first jobs after uni was in Domains and I still get pitches about domains till this day and I'm like, Babe, I haven't worked in Domains for like fifth ten years, like I just I this isn't for me. Absolutely. So that's another thing. Automation is great, but as with AI with everything, you need a human touch and understanding 'cause if you got 'cause then again you become one of the mass ten, fifteen people every day spamming about something and you're like, I'm not even gonna look at you'cause you see what's happening so I mean, we could do a whole other episode, couldn't we, about how that entire sales model is broken? And that's why I'm always talking about know your client to understand what are we gonna solve. And you're gonna that's it. You tell me like I see this and this expensive, I can do it faster and cheaper for you. Shit, take my money. Take my money. I don't have much, but they have all my money. Take it! Take what's left. it. Well, thank you so much, Ada, for joining us. it's been a really good conversation. and I think it's great to have your like a D to C perspective on ICP. Wow, that's a lot of th that's a lot of acronyms. but I think yeah, it it makes it more tangible and more actionable. And I think we can all take that away and make ours more actionable, which I think is probably the thing that's missing. in B2B at least for me. So yeah, thank you so much. you've been an inspiration. and we hope to see you on a live stream once this comes out. So if you've watched this episode, Ada will be on a live stream at some point. So come join and you can quiz her all about gaming and ICP and all of those good things.