One metric acquirers scrutinize that most marketers completely overlook

Rising AI costs are quietly eroding marketing's bottom line. Katrina Wong, Chief Marketing Officer at New Relic, has led seven successful exits and now factors AI spend directly into cost of goods sold. She breaks down the buy-versus-build decision for AI agents, explains why New Relic won't automate end-to-end campaigns yet, and shares how her team is orchestrating agents across marketing handoffs to control costs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.

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  Okay, you've been through seven successful exits. What's the one metric acquirers scrutinize that most marketers completely overlook?

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  Well, there's today, because we've been talking so much about AI. I think it's the cost of doing business now that AI is just part of doing business for those of us in tech and kind of an early adopter. So it's really understanding how much you're spending on AI and the cost of doing business in this new world and staying competitive. So in other words, it's COGS with AI factored in. I really think that's a new puzzle.

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  It's funny, I was thinking about this today. We have been using the same transcription company for five years. Whenever we do a meeting, I don't want to air them out, but a company shows up and writes down what we say and then sends us the file. And I think I pay like $200 a month. This is a company of one for these transcriptions and we do it across like seven or eight different podcasts. So it's a bunch of different, what looks like users to them. And the question is, should I spend half a day rebuilding this to lower my cost of goods sold? And then now I have an agent that's doing the same thing and what ends up being less expensive or more expensive? And there's this time and value exchange.

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  I could lower my COGS, but I have to invest more time in building it, then I have to maintain it, and then my AI expense of my token usage goes up. How do you think about finding that balance?

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  Yes, we talk about this internally a lot, the buy versus build. So we do have active conversations about what agents do we build versus do we wait for someone to come out with AI that's going to help us solve our problems? So for example, we're not building agents to run campaigns like end to end. We kind of think someone's going to solve that and we're just kind of waiting for that. Now, different handoffs between different subfunctions within marketing, we're starting to streamline and do some agent orchestration. So it is, yeah, I don't necessarily have an answer, but it's an active conversation about what do you actually buy versus build?

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  So it's an interesting time now.

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  All right, that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Katrina Wong, the Chief Marketing Officer at New Relic. If you'd like to contact Katrina, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com, or you can visit her company's website, which is newrelic.com. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube. And we'll be back in your podcast feed next week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

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