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The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network.
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performs better than TV advertising. Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
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We're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call at action
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that it's just a matter of timing. Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything
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Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use
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technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's a host of the Martech Podcast,
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Benjamin Shapiro. I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and joining me today is Chris Golek,
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the former founder of Demand Base and the current founder and CEO of Channel 99, a company that is
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solving marketing attribution challenges by revealing the source of three times the website
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visitors compared to your industry standards. And today, Chris is going to explain how to
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illuminate the dark funnel problem that is costing you millions in misattributed revenue.
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Time for a short break to hear from our sponsor, Scrunch. When was the last time you actually
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visited a website to research something? For me, AI does all that work now. So if AI is doing
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the discovery, research, and deciding who or what is your brand's website really for,
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the rise of AI bots becoming as important as new visitors is a massive change in user behavior,
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and that's what Scrunch is taking head on. Scrunch is the AI customer experience platform that
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helps marketing teams understand how AI agents experience their site. They tell you how your brand
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shows up in LLM results, where it doesn't, and what's preventing your content from being retrieve,
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trusted, or recommended. It's not just visibility. Scrunch shows you the content gaps,
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citation gaps, and how to fix the technical blockers that matter so your brand is found and chosen
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in AI answers. Face it, your most important site visitor isn't human anymore. If the AI
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deciding what gets surfaced, and for Martek podcast listeners, Scrunch is providing a free website
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diagnostic that uncovers how AI sees your site, where you have content gaps, and where you're
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showing up versus your competition. To see how LLM's evaluate your site, go to scrunch.com slash
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Martek. That's scrunch SCR-UNCH.com slash Martek. My next question, I'll talk about owning your
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mistakes. What's the biggest mistake you made building a company culture at demand base,
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and what are you doing differently at channel 99? So I would say that was one of the things we did
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really well at demand base, but the mistake was underestimating how much you really have to
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invest in it, to be successful at it. The reason I say that is over the years at demand base,
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we became a top 20 place to work in San Francisco for like eight or nine years in a row.
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But it didn't come easy. It's not about free snacks. You have to invest a lot in the people,
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the training, how you recruit, how you pay people, how transparent you are. There's doing
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philanthropic activity, so there's a lot that goes into it. I underestimated what that would
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be, because I set out pretty early, like I want to be one of the best places to work so we can
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hire and retain the greatest people available to us. What do you think makes a great place to work?
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Well, it's a common theme and thread and the types of people that you hire.
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For me, I'm more about collaborative type leadership style. We always did a lot of very transparent
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meetings, so everybody knew what was going on. There wasn't anything hidden. In one of the secrets,
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I think, for our cultures, what I discovered that brought us all together as a company was
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instead of doing just team events, we'd always do a team event around something philanthropic,
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and that really tied everybody together across department, different people, and so that was
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thematically was always something really important to me, and actually everybody that worked at
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the company. I had an occasional free snack every once in a while and never heard of it.
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I'll get you a bag of chips, yes. And a special thanks to Scrunch for sponsoring this interview.
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Scrunch is the AI customer experience platform that helps marketing teams understand how AI agents
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experience their site. They tell you how your brand shows up in LLM results, where it doesn't and
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what's preventing your content from being retrieved, trusted, or recommended. And for Martek podcast
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listeners, Scrunch is providing a free website diagnostic that uncovers how AI sees your site,
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where you have content gaps, and how you're showing up versus your competition. To see how LLM's
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evaluate your site, go to scrunch.com. That's scrunch s-e-r-u-n-c-h.com.
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All right, that wraps up this episode of The Martek Podcast. Thanks to Chris Gholik, the CEO and
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founder of Channel 99 for joining us. If you'd like to contact Chris, you could find a link to his
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LinkedIn profile in our show notes, or on martekpod.com, or you could visit his company's website at
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channel99.com. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and
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technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app, and we'll
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be back on your feed next week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to
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just focus on keeping your customers happy.
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Thanks for listening to The Martek Podcast.
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And I hear everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your
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brand, then visit iHeartEverything.com.