Podcasts about b2b growth

Depending on where you live, the video icon in your feed may have been nonexistent for a while. That's because LinkedIn was hard at work making video a better experience for us. Or did they? In this episode, we share the new, good, bad, and reality for video to build your brand on LinkedIn. And spoiler: it's not for everyone. But do tell us what you think, we'd love to hear from you.CONTACT US:Michelle J Raymond is a globally recognized LinkedIn™️ for business growth speaker, author and consultant. Her services – audit & strategy, LinkedIn training and LinkedIn profile rewrites.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://b2bgrowthco.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michelle B. Griffin is a TEDx speaker and personal brand + PR strategist who helps women authors and experts become recognized authorities and thought leaders in their industries.As the founder of Brand Leaders and the She's Visible™ movement, Michelle equips experts to position their personal brands for recognition, media opportunities and industry impact.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebgriffin/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Websites: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://michellebgriffin.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ShesVisible.com⁠⁠⁠Buy your copy on AmazonThe LinkedIn Branding Book, The Power of Two: Build Your Personal and Business Brand on LinkedIn for Exponential Growth -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mybook.to/The_LinkedIn_Branding_Book⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MichelleSquared.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OUR BOOKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The LinkedIn Branding Book + Workbook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Position Yourself Personal Branding Planner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Business Gold: LinkedIn Company Pages⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION:Simply DM both Michelles on LinkedIn to submit your question for a future episode.KEEP LEARNING HOW B2B TEAMS WIN ON LINKEDINIf you enjoy The LinkedIn Branding Show, you'll also love Michelle J Raymond's other podcast, Social Media for B2B Growth, where she shares practical, no-hacks strategies to help B2B teams turn LinkedIn into real business growth. Subscribe wherever you listen or catch the episodes here - ⁠https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/episodes⁠GET UNSTUCK WITH YOUR PERSONAL BRANDWhen you need clarity fast, Michelle's Position Yourself Power Hour™ gives you a 60-minute clarity session with strategic answers, feedback and next steps to get unstuck for your biggest personal branding roadblock.Book your session ⁠here ⁠https://michellebgriffin.com/powerhour/⁠

How do global B2B brands balance LinkedIn Company Pages, paid social, organic content and employee advocacy? In this episode of Social Media for B2B Growth, Michelle J Raymond speaks with Molly Hopkins, Associate Director of Social Media at CBRE, about what it takes to manage LinkedIn strategy inside a large global B2B organisation.Molly shares practical lessons on treating social media as an ecosystem, supporting executives and employees, managing multiple Company Pages, and deciding when content belongs on the brand Page versus a personal profile.Key moments in this episode:00:00 – Introduction01:45 – What a global B2B social media role really involves04:45 – Why clear processes matter for social media teams06:55 – How paid, organic, executive and employee content work together09:35 – A practical tiered approach to employee advocacy13:20 – Why you can't force employees to post on LinkedIn18:25 – Why LinkedIn Company Pages are not dying21:35 – Managing 150+ LinkedIn Company Pages globally23:35 – Why personal profiles can drive more clicks than Company PagesABOUT MICHELLE J RAYMONDMichelle J Raymond is a globally recognised LinkedIn Company Page strategist, trainer, speaker and founder of B2B Growth Co. She helps B2B organisations use LinkedIn Company Pages, employee advocacy and social selling to build trust, visibility and business growth.CONNECT WITH MICHELLELinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/Website: https://b2bgrowthco.com/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://b2bgrowthco.com/newsletter/CONNECT WITH MOLLY HOPKINSLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-hopkins/LinkedIn CBRE Company Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cbre/

For high‑growth B2B tech brands, the next funding round or IPO is no longer just a financial milestone – it is a communications stress test. Investors are bringing AI‑driven tools, sharper scrutiny and higher expectations into every decision. The companies that win are those that can match strong numbers with a compelling, consistent story.In this episode of the FINITE Podcast, Jodi Norris sits down with Liam McLaughlin, Managing Partner at Clarity Europe, to unpack how CMOs and marketing leaders can actively prepare for their next raise or listing through comms and marketing. They explore where tech investment is flowing today, why AI is fueling a renewed funding boom, and what it really takes to move from “interesting startup” to “serious international player” in the eyes of investors.Liam breaks investor attraction down into three pillars: authenticity, narrative and AI visibility. He shares practical examples from an EV charging infrastructure client on the road to IPO, and a fintech brand using AI visibility programmes to show up consistently across search, executives, media and analysts – and, crucially, inside LLMs.Liam has almost 20 years of integrated communications experience, working with global technology brands including Oracle, NetApp and EMC, as well as consumer names such as Canva, Clearscore and eBay. As Managing Partner of Clarity Europe, he has led communications strategies for brands navigating major funding rounds and public offerings across the UK and Europe.Inside you'll find…How to build an authentic, investor‑ready brand story that goes beyond “AI‑washing”A practical framework for aligning spokespeople, channels and proof points over a multi‑year funding journeyWhy AI visibility is now a core stakeholder in investor relations – and how to measure and optimise it

Employee advocacy is more than asking your team to share company posts on LinkedIn.For B2B organisations, the real opportunity is using employee advocacy, LinkedIn Company Pages and social media strategy to build trust before buyers are ready to speak to sales.In this episode of Social Media for B2B Growth, Michelle J Raymond is joined by Colin Day from Oktopost to explore why B2B brands need to move beyond content distribution and start treating social media as part of their go-to-market strategy.If your employee advocacy programme is focused only on more reach, more shares or more impressions, you're missing the bigger picture. Your Company Page builds brand credibility, but your employees bring the human voice, expertise and context that B2B buyers trust.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to employee advocacy with Colin Day02:18 Why social media is now go-to-market infrastructure05:15 Why B2B brands need to stop broadcasting10:15 The problem with treating advocacy as distribution15:15 How employee advocacy builds trust before sales22:30 Why your LinkedIn Company Page still matters26:30 Measuring employee advocacy beyond vanity metricsConnect with Michelle J RaymondLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/Website: https://b2bgrowthco.comSubscribe to the B2B Growth Co newsletterConnect with Colin DayLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daycolin/Oktopost: https://www.oktopost.com

Small businesses always have challenges, but these days none is more damaging than the costs of doing business jacked up by inflation. Gene Marks, a small business owner himself, shares a few tips on how to manage the situation against the year-over-year profitability plunge of 1.3%. Financial pressures are hitting many, and a report found that 90% of employees would leave and seek out a company offering financial wellness resources as part of a benefits package. On a good note, some startups are using AI to solve practical business problems in the B2B space and drive growth.  Topics: 00:00 – Introduction 00:19 – Profitability Issues 03:34 – Financial Wellness Benefits 06:26 – Startups, AI, and Growth 08:25 – Episode Wrap-up   Additional Resources Meet Paychex: https://bit.ly/3VtM6bs Small business and AI: https://bit.ly/ai-and-small-biz Register for AI webinar: https://bit.ly/ai-webinar-series DISCLAIMER: The information presented in this podcast, and that is further provided by the presenter, should not be considered legal or accounting advice, and should not substitute for legal, accounting, or other professional advice in which the facts and circumstances may warrant. We encourage you to consult legal counsel as it pertains to your own unique situation(s) and/or with any specific legal questions you may have.

How do you turn a legacy brand into a modern customer growth engine? In this episode, Meta Karagianni talks with RQI Partners' SVP of Marketing, Russell Griffin, about aligning sales and marketing around the most critical customer relationships, using insight to shape joined-up strategies, and rebalancing from deal‑by‑deal selling to co-ordinated interventions to move buying group momentum and drive retention, expansion, and advocacy.

IN THIS EPISODEStruggling on LinkedIn lately? Let's look deeper....is your brand positioning and messaging set to do the heavy lifting so it's crystal clear who you are and what you're known for?In this episode, we share our brands stories when we ventured off and how we got back our brand magic, plus the top tips to take now to get back to a foundational first brand.CONTACT US:Michelle J Raymond is a globally recognized LinkedIn™️ for business growth speaker, author and consultant. Her services – audit & strategy, LinkedIn training and LinkedIn profile rewrites.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://b2bgrowthco.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michelle B. Griffin is a TEDx speaker and personal brand + PR strategist who helps women authors and experts become recognized authorities and thought leaders in their industries.As the founder of Brand Leaders and the She's Visible™ movement, Michelle equips experts to position their personal brands for recognition, media opportunities and industry impact.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebgriffin/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Websites: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://michellebgriffin.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ShesVisible.com⁠⁠Buy your copy on AmazonThe LinkedIn Branding Book, The Power of Two: Build Your Personal and Business Brand on LinkedIn for Exponential Growth -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mybook.to/The_LinkedIn_Branding_Book⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MichelleSquared.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OUR BOOKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The LinkedIn Branding Book + Workbook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Position Yourself Personal Branding Planner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Business Gold: LinkedIn Company Pages⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION:Simply DM both Michelles on LinkedIn to submit your question for a future episode.GET UNSTUCK WITH YOUR PERSONAL BRANDIf you're overthinking your message, positioning, or next move, Michelle's Position Yourself Power Hour gives you clear direction and practical next steps so you can move forward with clarity and confidence.Book your session here https://michellebgriffin.com/powerhour/KEEP LEARNING HOW B2B TEAMS WIN ON LINKEDINIf you enjoy The LinkedIn Branding Show, you'll also love Michelle J Raymond's other podcast, Social Media for B2B Growth, where she shares practical, no-hacks strategies to help B2B teams turn LinkedIn into real business growth. Subscribe wherever you listen.

#352 | Dave sits down with Uzair Dada, CEO of Iron Horse, to talk about why most B2B companies are overcomplicating their marketing and what to do instead. Uzair breaks down his three-part growth framework — get discovered, get chosen, close — and explains why most companies are wasting the majority of their ad budget targeting the wrong audience entirely. He also gets into how to actually show up in AI search, why brand vs. demand is a false choice marketers invented to argue about, and how he blocks every Friday afternoon to build with AI. Then they get into what AI adoption really looks like inside enterprise companies, and why taste and judgment are becoming the only true differentiators left.Check out Webflow's free AEO assessment here. Timestamps(00:00) - - Intro (03:17) - - Running the same agency for 26 years and why AI makes it exciting again (06:19) - - Why Uzair blocks Friday afternoons from 2-7 to build with AI (11:13) - - How a personal prep tool became a company-wide account dossier app (15:34) - - The leadership meeting habit that drove AI adoption across the org (17:35) - - Are marketers going away? The case for taste and judgment (25:02) - - Why brand vs. demand is a false choice (26:29) - - Get discovered, get chosen, close: a simpler B2B growth framework (28:03) - - The company targeting a million people when their real audience was 20,000 (34:52) - - The real bottleneck to AI in enterprise isn't the tech, it's governance (41:46) - - AEO: start with your Gong call transcripts, not a new tool (44:28) - - Why the second query matters more than the first in AI search

After a trillion‑dollar sell‑off in software stocks and the so‑called “SaaSpocalypse”, it is not just founders who are nervous - CMOs and marketing leaders are questioning the future of their products and positioning. In this episode of the FINITE Podcast we sit down with Antony Cousins, VP Product at Meltwater, to interrogate the death‑of‑SaaS narrative head‑on. They unpack how investor decks, agentic AI and vibe‑coded tools like Claude Cowork have fuelled the story that AI will replace subscriptions. Ant brings a rare perspective, combining a career in Ministry of Defence tech roles with frontline communications work in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab Spring, leadership in AI startups and now product leadership at Meltwater. He has spent the last decade at the intersection of AI, media intelligence and reputation.If you are a B2B marketing leader wondering how AI will affect your revenue, this conversation will help you separate existential risk from lazy narrative – and design for growth, not just survival.Inside you'll find…Why “SaaS is dead” is an oversimplified narrative – and where AI agents and vibe‑coded tools genuinely threaten software.How data moats, long‑term memory and UX become the defensible edge in an AI‑native SaaS ecosystem.What CMOs and agencies should change now: commercial models, junior hiring and how they collaborate with software providers.

Is AI actually transforming wholesale distribution, or are we just managing our businesses with better dashboards?In Episode of Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution, Kevin Brown and Tom Burton unpack the real story behind AI enablement, tariff refund chaos, Iran and oil market volatility, Amazon Business strategy, Fed rate policy, industrial M&A, and robotics. This episode connects geopolitics, supply chain economics, B2B eCommerce, and AI adoption into one clear message: technology must enable growth, not just manage operations.What You'll Learn:Why most B2B leaders are not AI ready, and why the issue is structural, not technicalHow to use the Discover, Alert, Guide, Automate framework to enable sales and operations teamsWhat tariff refunds mean for distributors, manufacturers, and downstream customersWhy Amazon Business may be a strategic opportunity, not just channel conflictHow Iran, oil markets, and interest rate policy directly impact wholesale distribution marginsWhy industrial branch traffic is improving despite low consumer sentimentEpisode Highlights:03:15 – Why AI is not the strategy, enablement is09:24 – How unified data across ERP, CRM, and eCommerce uncovers hidden growth17:23 – Iran, oil prices, and why the Strait of Hormuz matters to distributors30:49 – Kevin Warsh, rate cuts, and AI productivity gains35:33 – Tariff refund portal launches, what it means for supply chains45:06 – Industrial branch traffic improves, what that signals for demand56:23 – Why 86 percent of B2B leaders are not AI ready01:07:55 – Tesla Optimus and the future of robotics in manufacturingTools, Frameworks, and Strategies Mentioned:Discover, Alert, Guide, Automate enablement modelAI powered CRM and unified data platformsAmazon Business B2B marketplace analyticsTariff refund portal processEnterprise growth platform strategyIndustrial M&A consolidation trendsClosing Insight:The future of wholesale distribution will not be decided by who adopts AI first, but by who uses technology to enable smarter decisions, faster execution, and clearer visibility across the customer journey.Leave a Review: Help us grow by sharing your thoughts on the show.Learn more about the LeadSmart AI B2B Sales Platform: https://www.leadsmarttech.com/Join the conversation each week on LinkedIn Live.Want even more insight to the stories we discuss each week? Subscribe to the Around The Horn Newsletter.You can also hear the podcast and other excellent content on our YouTube Channel.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.

How do you drive growth when buying is more complex, AI is changing how customers research, and speed matters more than ever? In this episode, host Meta Karagianni talks with former Thomson Reuters CMO, David Carrel, about co-creating a sharper growth vision, simplifying goals, redesigning teams to stay closer to customers, and building the skills and mindsets to win the deals that matter.

B2B technology is shifting at an unprecedented pace. As traditional sectors grapple with supply chain pressures, shifting workforces, and the demand for personalisation, new frontiers like hardware-as-a-service and physical AI are moving from peripheral concepts to essential infrastructure. For marketers, the challenge is clear: how do you build a category and drive adoption for a disruptive technology that fundamentally changes how the world works?In this episode of the FINITE Podcast, Jodi Norris sits down with Caitlin Allen to unpack the mechanics of category creation and how marketers can spot market signals, tipping points, and growth opportunities within emerging tech. They explore the nuances of marketing robotics, how to structure a team to create FOMO (fear of missing out) while helping buyers overcome their fear of messing up, and the structural forces reshaping B2B go-to-market motions.Caitlin Allen is a seasoned marketing leader who has spent two decades building markets for transformative technologies before they are part of a P&L. She has helped scale category-defining companies across venture capital, deep tech, and consumer platforms—including serving on the executive teams that led Lyft through its IPO and Happy Returns to its acquisition by PayPal, as well as advising ambitious startups as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. She is currently the SVP of Market and Chair at Simbe, where she is pioneering Physical AI and bringing "Store Intelligence" to the $28T physical retail economy.Caitlin shares her refined methodology for taking complex, multi-threaded sales cycles to market. She discusses how she conquered narrative homogeny in the robotics space, the five questions every buyer needs to answer during a paradigm shift, and how she integrates an intricate network of AI agents into her team's daily operations - from persona-specific bots and Reddit monitors to leadership coaching agents.If you want to understand how to position disruptive technology and orchestrate a category-defining marketing strategy, this conversation is a must-listen.

In this episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, I sit down with Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth to discuss the biggest transition in marketing history: the shift from social media to "interest media." I challenge you to stop relying on outdated "potential reach" and start posting one to three times a day on LinkedIn and TikTok. I also dive into why branding is an art form that requires humility and why replying to your comments is the most underutilized growth hack in the game.You'll learn about:Potential Reach vs. Actualized ReachWhy LinkedIn is the New Facebook 2012The Effect of TikTok for B2C BrandsHow to Build a Brand Community Through Radical ListeningWhy Ego is the Greatest Barrier to Your Business Scaling

Most high ticket B2B sales don't fail because of price.They fail because the conversation structure breaks down early.In this episode, we break down a practical 3-stage framework for high ticket sales that improves your sales discovery call, strengthens qualification, and makes objection handling easier before the closing stage.You'll learn how strong sales psychology and structured conversations help teams run more effective B2B sales processes without relying on pressure tactics.Inside this episode:• how to structure a better sales discovery call• why qualification improves high ticket sales outcomes• how objection handling becomes easier earlier in the conversation• how sales psychology builds trust with buyers• how to close high ticket sales more consistently• how professional teams approach complex B2B sales conversations⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

old outreach emails don't work the way they used to.Most cold email outreach today gets ignored because buyers receive hundreds of messages that all sound the same. The problem isn't outreach itself — it's how cold outreach is being done.In Episode 3 of the How to Get Clients mini-series, Georgia Watson explains what separates effective cold outreach emails from the ones that never get opened or answered.Instead of relying on volume, high-performing sellers use personalization, insight-led messaging, and relevance to start meaningful conversations earlier in the buying journey.In this episode, you'll learn:• why most cold outreach emails fail before the conversation starts• how to structure cold email outreach that gets responses• what buyers actually expect from modern cold outreach• how personalization improves reply rates in cold outreach campaigns• why insight-led messaging performs better than product-led outreach• how to build credibility through cold outreach without sounding pushyIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will challenge common sales assumptions and help you build a more effective sales process.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

How Rethinking Paid Media Can Drive More Efficient, Sustainable B2B Growth In this competitive environment, the fundamentals of effective B2B marketing are more crucial than ever, yet many brands are losing sight of them. As platforms become more inundated with noise, organizations are increasingly over-investing in paid media while under-investing in the strategic groundwork that makes paid campaigns perform. This imbalance leads to wasted spend, mixed messages, and weaker results, just as B2B audiences are becoming more selective. So, how can marketing leaders leverage paid media to drive more efficient, sustainable B2B growth? That's why we're talking to Andrea Ness (Head of Media, ddm marketing + communications), who shares her expertise on how rethinking paid media can drive more efficient, sustainable B2B growth. During our conversation, Andrea emphasized the importance of integrating paid media with owned and earned media to creative a holistic customer journey. She stressed that B2B paid media should amplify strong messaging rather than being the sole focus of a marketing campaign. With sales cycles often lasting 6-18 months, Andrea highlighted the need for consistent messaging across all channels and the importance of building long-term trust. She also underscored the significance of long-lasting assets such as website and thought leadership for sustainable ROI. Andrea advocated for a strategic approach to measurement, leveraging full-funnel metrics that go beyond immediate conversions to capture the true impact of a brand's digital presence. https://youtu.be/HdpEGsfjxuI Topics discussed in episode: [00:00] Why a weak narrative just means broadcasting confusion at scale  [02:44] Why teams skip to conversions and why it backfires in 6–18 month buying cycles  [05:45] The problem found when sales, PR, web, and leadership aren’t saying the same thing  [09:19] How B2B buyer behavior has changed, and why sales calls are the last resort  [13:24] How to reframe brand investment in language leadership buys into  [17:09] The three paid media pitfalls every B2B marketer must avoid [21:59] Why foundational messaging lifts every channel, and how to evolve it  [24:59] Demystifying owned, earned, and paid media [32:11] Long-lasting assets vs. short-term ads: SEO, thought leadership, and repurposed content that compound  [34:48] Brand lift studies, return visitors, time on site, and the metrics that prove full-funnel progress  [37:56] Why you must build the house before you turn on the amplifier Companies and links mentioned: Andrea Ness on LinkedIn  ddm marketing + communications   Transcript Andrea Ness, Christian Klepp Andrea Ness  00:00 People usually don’t convert on the first ad exposure that they see. So you really, really do want to make sure that there are so many other ways that they can get to that information. Advertising helps. But you know, like, like, if you look at you know what your journey is. And really, it’s a great exercise if you don’t have a customer journey, like, laid out on paper and really, and looking at that, not just for paid media channels, but also, you know, like, here’s what we’re doing, foundational like that owned media, you know. And then here’s what you know earned media is doing that they’re really pushing out. And here’s their focus. Christian Klepp  00:31 The fundamentals of effective B2B Marketing have not changed, but in 2026 many brands are losing sight of them as platforms become more crowded and ad costs continue to rise, organizations are increasingly over investing in paid media while under investing in the strategic groundwork that makes paid campaigns perform. This imbalance leads to wasted spend mixed messages and weaker results, just as audiences are becoming more selective. So how can B2B Marketers leverage paid media to drive more efficient, sustainable growth? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today, I’ll be talking to Andrea Ness, who will be answering this question. She’s the head of media at DDM Marketing and Communications, where she helps drive digital marketing initiatives for B2B organizations, tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is. Andrea Ness, welcome to the show. Andrea Ness  01:29 Very good to be here. Christian Klepp  01:30 Really good to have you on. I mean, you know, we’ve, we’ve had such a great free interview conversation where we, we laughed so much about all these random topics, and that was already, like, very telling of, like, what’s to come. But I’m, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. It’s, it’s a very pertinent one. I think it’s something that B2B marketing teams really need to be paying attention to as they move forward. At the time of this recording, at the beginning of 2026 All right, so let’s, let’s jump right in and start the interview. So, Andrea, like for you’re on a mission, I would say, to help B2B companies deliver high impact marketing campaigns that drive measurable results. For this conversation, I’d like to zero in on the topic of how rethinking the role of paid media can drive more efficient, sustainable growth. So I’d like to kick off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them, right? So question number one, why do you think paid media should function as an extension of brand trust, rather than the centerpiece of a marketing strategy? And the follow up question is, where do you see many B2B Marketing Teams struggle. Andrea Ness  02:44 All right, I will start with round one, but with the first one, usually, when someone hears media campaign, they go straight to, like the media teams and like going to tactics where, like, where we really want to back up and just say, you know, paid media works as it to amplify the message that you’re trying to put out there, not to create the message. So if you don’t have that, those strong messaging and those components in place, or what we like to say at your house in order, you know, like we’re not going to be the best at creating the message, but only taking really resonating messaging and putting it out to the world. So it we call paid media more like a distribution engine. And it’s not the message itself, you know, and it’s also, you know, to really, really underline brand narrative is, if their your brand narrative isn’t strong, your paid media just amplifies people to get confused. One of the things that we like to talk about with clients is that audiences see 1000s of messages every day, you know. So like, even if we might be in the right channels, you know, with everyone else, if it doesn’t resonate, if it doesn’t align, you know, if it doesn’t connect and strong, then they’re just trying to pass it by with hundreds and 1000s of others. So really, really, what is that message component? What are you trying to tell them? When are you trying to tell them that? And then we just use paid media, the tactics for paid media, just to make sure that we’re amplifying that message to the right people. So that’s with your first question, what your second one was, Christian Klepp  04:14 Where do you see a lot of based on based on that, like, where do you see a lot of B2B marketing teams struggle? Andrea Ness  04:20 So one of the things we keep on we keep on hearing over and over again, because again, you know, I know clients like, really like, their focus on revenue. They’re focused on the end goal. But you know, when we hear a lot of times, when we hear like we need, you know, consistently, more leads, more conversions, more revenue. We got to go straight to the end when what we’re thinking about like, and what we have to bring clients back to is like, what is that customer journey? And, you know, like for us to be able to move them through the funnel, we can’t just go straight to the end and asking them to do something when they don’t even have that trust, or they’re not even, you know, in the consideration journey yet. You know, so with with B2B, especially like consumers, sometimes it’s a quicker side cycle. But with B2B, you know that your cycles are could be like six to 18 months, even longer. So if you’re not talking to them throughout each of the journey and building that trust along the way, you know we’re going to be losing them if you go straight to like, you know, do this and, you know, give us your contact information. We learned, especially now, especially with new generations of people. They don’t like always. Like filling out forms. They like to do their own research in many different ways. And if you’re not there in each of those moments as they’re like, going through and building that trust, wherever they’re going to get those information points, you know, just going out and saying, like, do this now. Deadline approaching, you know, like you’re gonna they’re not going to be ready to do the end the end goal. So, Christian Klepp  05:43 Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, Andrea Ness  05:45 Another thing that we notice is more like the fragmented, like the messaging so, and it’s just, you know, we that’s why we really, really hone in on integrated marketing. Because it really is, if we’re ready, if we have our key messages in place. It’s not just what the ads should say. It’s in every form of their communications. And sometimes people don’t think that way, because businesses are in their different teams. They have their sales team, they’re their PR team and communications team, you know, they have, you know, their web team. They have, you know, like all these other teams. But when, when we are ready to say these are going to be our key messages we’re going to hit out there. We have to make sure that all of these teams are aligned and the messaging resonates. So no matter where your audience goes to or where they go out to seek information, you don’t want to lose them by like they seen an ad with this message, but then they don’t. They go to your website and they don’t see it anymore, or even their organic channels, if you’re not talking about even those, those points in there, you know. And we also like, even, like, make sure clients know of like, even, like, public relations teams and whatnot. Like, you know, is it in your boiler plates anymore? Is there ways that we could integrate it in some of your content marketing, or your or the articles that you’re putting out there, or the thought leadership, you know, articles that your, leadership team is putting out there. So really, is taking those, like the key components, and what you have those down, and what you want your elevator pitch to be known for, and making sure every channel, especially sales teams too, like they’re the ones that are on the ground, they’re the ones that are, you know, talking to them when they’re in consideration, almost out of consideration. Are they saying the same points that we are trying to say up front and as your leadership, you know, team also, if they’re doing speaking points, having those one on one conversations, you know, are they also bringing down those team messages so everyone can get, you know, the same type of elevator pitch when they’re when they see it. Christian Klepp  07:36 Absolutely, absolutely, it’s, it’s amazing to me that, like, You know, you see this across the board, how the messaging tends to be inconsistent across the different channels. I don’t know where that that somehow got lost in translation, that like, okay, for each channel the message should be, should be different and, and that’s, you know, like, to your point, like, nothing could be further from the truth. Andrea Ness  08:00 Yeah, and it’s yeah, and sometimes it’s, you know, sometimes there are going to be other messages, like, you know, take organic social, for instance. It’s doing multiple jobs. It’s not just selling. It is, you know, bringing the culture component. It’s probably also talking to it, you know, possible future employees. And so it is doing, like, other themes in general. But if there is a sales point when, you know, and what we’ve learned is that when people hit consideration stages, they’re not ready to fill out a form right yet. They’re not ready to even call you on the phone, but they will connect with your socials to see, you know, like, so like, just as like, more reminders, but so if you’re not also seeing some of those marketing messages in there as well, you know, like, you’re gonna, you know, you’re going to lose them, and they’re just going to have that connection. And we always like to say is, like, when we put ads out in market again, very rarely are they going to resonate. The first thing they’re going to take that college, and especially for B2B, it’s different for retail, you know, the big sales, but for B2B, like, the expectation is they see your ad resonate. It might be something, oh, when I’m out of work, maybe I’ll go, you know, look into this. But you know, is that message really, really saying what you wanted to say and when they want to organically come back and find you later, wherever they go to to find is that going to be connecting, or is it going to be a completely different scenario where they can’t even get to where you want them to go to? You know, the follow the journey? Christian Klepp  09:19 No, absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. I did have two follow up questions for you based on everything that you’ve said in the past couple of minutes. So the first one is like, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve been marketing for a little bit, like, especially B2B marketing, and I’m sure it’s the same with you, but marketing has become so much more complex than when we started out, like, just from your perspective and your experience, especially in the paid media landscape, like, how has technology impacted the way that teams go about dealing with paid media? Maybe talk about the advantages and also how it’s been a little bit detrimental to them as well? Andrea Ness  10:02 Yeah, I would, I would say that just the many different options and how audiences are so different, and how like, from where we I learned how to, you know, how to connect with people is completely different from how, like, the New Age is connecting where, you know, they are really like, you know, like a lot of people like, they less phone calls, you know, less email addresses they have. They really, really learn from technology. They really learn from video like, video learning is a really key adapter to that, you know, also reaching out, even through like, you know, like DM’s (Direct Messages) of social media, those quick interactions where they’re not ready. You know, when, like, we’re like, on the B2B side. We’re always used to, like, lead forms, going to the website, doing that. And sometimes they just don’t want to leave the environments that they’re in. And if you’re not allowing them to learn from the environments that they’re in, too, as well, you know, then, then we’re going to be losing out. And a lot of times, too, when they’re ready for they want to know a quick answer, you know, with, like, with chatGPT, with everything else, they can get those answers fast. So if you’re not there and present and responding in an efficient manner, like, then you’re going to lose them, because there’s going to be another competitor that does have, like, the, you know, the the chat on their website, that they think they can get a quick answer, where they don’t feel comfortable calling on a phone and knowing when you call on the phone, you’re going to have to be a waiting period to talk to someone, and you might not get a human so it’s just everyone has, like, their own ways of connecting, you know, and to get information and to make sure that you are available in those information cycles, rather than just, like, let’s just take them to a form, and then maybe a day later, we’ll have someone follow up with them. So you just want to make sure that you’re present in the moments where they’re ready to make those choices. Christian Klepp  11:44 You know, it’s funny that you mentioned that, because I had this experience yesterday when I was trying to call a client, and then I heard this voice after it rang like, three times, and I thought, okay, it’s going to be the client. And so I started talking, and then I realized, like, oh, this person is not available at the moment, if you leave your name and tell me what this call is about, I can see if this person’s available. I’m like, Oh, okay. AI (Artificial Intelligence), right. So I’d have to, I had to tell, I have to tell the AI, okay, this is my name and this is the reason why I’m calling. And it says, It pauses for two seconds and says, Thank you. I will try to connect you. And then there’s this little like medley playing in the background, and then says, person is not available, please leave a message. I’m like, wow, that was a lot of like, hoops to jump through. Right? Like, Andrea Ness  12:30 yes, exactly. Christian Klepp  12:31 But to your point, right, to your point, it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of like, waiting and, you know, Andrea Ness  12:37 and I would say too, like, even, like, you know, from moving to, you know, making a phone call, knowing that you’re going to get, you know, a customer service level, but then to get a real answer, you might have to ask for a manager and go up to that level. Back in the day, you know, I would, I would tell people, you know, because I have really, you know, experience on the social media side. I’m like, you know, what? If you go straight to the social media inboxes, you’re going to get a quicker, faster response from a different limb, because that’s managed by PR teams and communications channels, and they have to be really, really but what they can respond to like is, you know, going to be at that already a tier two or tier three level. So it really is. Everything’s changing all the time, and you just want to make sure that you know when they’re ready when they ask your question. If you’re not there to answer that question, then someone else is going to answer that question for you. Christian Klepp  13:24 Yeah, yeah, that’s absolutely right. All right. So that was my first question. The second question, which you kind of already brought up, but because teams are dealing with this all the time, and I love that you brought it up, how do you deal with pushback? And when I mean, when I say push back, it’s like, how do you deal with senior management and B2B organizations, of which there are many that are going to look at your media campaign and your outreach campaign and say, Okay, well, Andrea, that’s all nice and good. But like, you know, how do we get to revenue quickly? What’s the ROI on this? Like, we need leads. We don’t need them. We, you know, we don’t need engagement. We don’t need engagement and sharing. We need leads. Like, you know, how do you deal with that kind of pushback, and how do you get them to understand that this takes time. Andrea Ness  14:12 It is, yeah, it really is an educational moment, because our clients are experts at their fields in what they do, you know? And so we really do also want to come in as coming in as a partner, that we also want to showcase our marketing expertise. And like you, do this really well. And while you do you know your job really well. Let us go in and also give you some information agitation of why, why if we go straight to, straight to the call to action, why that you know, is going to be less resonant than if we come in and say, You know what, let’s talk we know they’re going to they start here in the research phase building awareness, and now it’s time to build trust and consideration and answering you know exactly when they’re when they’re in that consideration phase. What are the key points that you need to tell them there, and why you need to message them differently, and why sometimes it’s. Not good to go straight to the call to action, because when they see that, then they’re going to be more likely to be like, you’re bombarding me. I’m not ready for the sales thing. I just want information. So it’s just like, how do we stay safe, top of mind, and especially in that consideration cycle, which is the longest cycle, it really is building trust. So like, how do you also offer information that’s what’s in there for them, not what’s in it for our clients to be like, You know what? You really care about me, and you’re not you’re not like, begging for me to contact you right away, but you’re giving me something, information that’s very like, that I need in the moment, that’s helping with with my job, that’s helping me with doing this stuff. So then when I do need you, you know, maybe like in that cycle period, I’m going to think of you first, because you were there, providing that information and showcasing the expertise, and I saw you at that event, you know. And just like you’re you’re building up those points to build that trust. So when they are ready to receive you in their moment, you know that you’re be one of the ones that they call so it really is trying to really think of that journey, and every journey is different per client, but to really look at, like, here’s the communications channels that are happening, both paid, but also, you know, like, you know, like, on the ground and, you know, organic and everything else. And like, how do we also make sure that we’re moving them along in a way, that they’re ready for it. Christian Klepp  16:24 Yeah, yeah, you’ve laid that out beautifully. That tells me that you’ve dealt with this situation many times before. Andrea Ness  16:29 We do it all the time. And you know, we really want to be stewards of our clients money, so we know, like, you’re going to give us the same amount of money to go into market here, or maybe getting the house in order, getting our messaging like, maybe, how do we resonate? How do we give them information? That’s what’s in it for them. And then we go into market and spend the same amount of money that we would be right away, and the results are just even better, because we’re talking to people that are not just early, but they’re already thinking about you because we made them think about you. Christian Klepp  17:01 Yeah, absolutely. I’ll move us along to the next question about key pitfalls that marketing teams should avoid, and what should they be doing instead? Andrea Ness  17:09 Okay, so there’s going to be, like, a few of them. One of the ones is, sort of, you know, what we what we just mentioned this too, is, like, the going into doing a marketing campaign without that strategic position that you have before you get started. So, you know, wanting to make sure that you have clear market positioning, you have really good messaging frame rooms, frameworks that you know that this is how you should be talking about them here. And sometimes it’s going to be messaging, you know, differently based on different audiences for a whole unique, you know, types of instances, but you’re not just focusing on, Oh, these are these ads. Are really pretty let’s get them out there. But do they resonate? Do they connect? You know, like, are they going to make people stop and look and listen, you know, rather than just pass by because they’re seeing 1000s of other ads as well. So, like, really thinking about that. Another thing is, what we know we talked about before is this, like the over reliance on paid media. You know, we’re treating ads as the primary growth lever, and then that is our answer, no matter what we have, you know, like, what, what the house looks like, what the you know, what the levers that we have are in place, but just so instead what we want to use it as just to amplify the really strong messaging that we all believe in, and we know it’s going to work, and we know we see it, you know, tested and working, and then to be able to get that out there, and then also just, you know, the pitfall number three would be, like, more like measuring only on short term metrics. So, like, we’re only focused on the leads, you know, like, that is our answer, and that’s only what we care about. We’re reporting on where there is so much that gets them through each of those ones. Like, how much engagement, how much audience growth did we have throughout? Where are they at in the funnel, where they were, you know, during the baseline, you know, match it served we saw them, you know. So just really looking at, like, the different ways that we know that they’re in the funnel, they’re listening, they’re understanding, Christian Klepp  19:03 Yeah, no, absolutely, yeah. There we go, man. Like, you know, we’re only focusing on leads. That’s all, that’s all I want to hear. That’s all I want to hear. Andrea Ness  19:11 We know, we know our clients have a bottom line and, you know, and it’s like their jobs on the line, and this is what their focus is on, doing it too. But if we don’t have that upfront cycle, moving that journey, knowing, especially if we know their cycle of, like, 18 months, you know, to get them to the leads, we should be talking, you know, to them a year, you know, to get them through. And then just really focus on, Christian Klepp  19:35 Well, it’s a process too, isn’t it? And I think you brought this up earlier in the conversation, that especially in B2B, we’re looking at a buying committee of anywhere between six to 10 people. This isn’t somebody that makes a decision on impulse, like, you go into a supermarket and oh gosh, like, look at that deal. Let me pull up my credit card. And people on B2B just don’t make decisions that way, right? In fact, I’m. In fact, I think to your earlier point, they do a lot of their own research. They probably talk to industry peers. They look online to see like, what other people are saying, what, or even like what they’re going to find if they do a Google search, or, these days, an AI search, right? And they’re not going to like immediately say, Well, let me get a hold of one of your sales people, and let’s jump on a call. I mean, that’s probably the last thing that they want to do. Andrea Ness  20:25 Yeah, yeah, if they have all those other areas where they can research and how other people are communicating them as well. So yeah, sales people right now are, like, one of the last ones. But we and we know there’s that, like, if they get to a meeting, they’re more likely to diverse if they get to, you know, once they get there, but you got to make sure that they get there. And that’s like, the hardest part is to get them in the room and to talk to them, because we know the sales people are great at what they do a lot of times, you know, like even talking to clients too. Like they forget to even, like to have conversations with their sales people, because they just want over here. But I’m like, sometimes your sales people are like, they know the frequently asked questions. They know what people are dealing with to get to sell. And then if you could take what you’re learning from there, you know, and the questions that they’re asking in other channels that, like, could be part of your messaging and how you answer that you know. And now maybe you need a frequently asked question thing on your website when you know they can get those answers quickly rather than making a phone call because they’re not ready to so Christian Klepp  21:23 That’s it. That’s an FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) page or an FAQ section, right? Or perhaps even multiple FAQ sections, right, depending on how how diverse the portfolio is. Andrea Ness  21:34 Correct. Christian Klepp  21:35 Okay, you talked about this earlier, but I, you know, I’ve, we’ve got to go back to it and unpack it a little bit, because, again, the hint is in the name, like, the foundation is key, right? The foundation is very important. So talk to us about how strong foundational messaging improves performance across every channel. And I think a lot of people underestimate how important that is, Andrea Ness  21:59 yeah, and it really is because, you know, like, you’re probably not a siloed company that does the only thing that and no other people do it. So it really is, not only are your competitors out there and then you’re also, like, having to fight the 1000s of other brands that are talking to the same audiences for different reasons, but really, what, what does make you need you know, like, what you know like, and it’s, it’s a good exercise to do it. But like, based on you know, you and your competitor, what? Why do they sway towards you? Like, how? And then, what are those key messages that you really, really want to put out there that, like, so, so they, so they already know that. But like, really learning, like, what are your needs? What are your key messages for the time? And that can change. So like, based on specific focus parts that you really like your industry really wants a focus part focus on. But like, even if you’re looking at and saying, You know what, this department can really use more revenue right now. So let’s then take this quarter and focus on, like, these, these departments, and that’s going to be our key messages. But now we have to make sure everyone’s talking these teams mess the same ones and not ones that they were talking about six months ago. So it really is like, what are we trying to tell them? What makes us unique, how and now that we have our needs, how are you going to creatively say that in a way that’s going to resonate with people, that will make them stop and look and, you know, spend more time on your site, spend more time on the ad and just, you know, so just in those ways, like, what makes you different? But then also, how are you showing those differences in a creative way that’s trying to make it stand out? Christian Klepp  23:30 And I think that, in itself, is quite the exercise, isn’t it? I mean, like, you know, you could probably speak from experience, because a lot of companies like have this misconception about what their uniqueness actually is. And you know, where I’m going with this, right? Like, they start, they start either defaulting to features or our uniqueness is our people, you know, they start, like, throwing in, like, generic answers like that, right? When, when they actually, like, I won’t say, fail to see it from this perspective. But they, what they sometimes don’t understand is that the uniqueness lies in your ability, in your ability to solve the customer’s problems and challenges. Like, how you know, how are you uniquely equipped to deal with that. Christian Klepp  23:57 And with your audiences. Like, how different maybe your audiences are, and you have a few different groups of audiences, and then when you’re looking at them, you know that, like, maybe key message one and two really hits home here, but not really over here in this audience. So now we need to, like, shift our focus. And for these audiences, we need to really hone in on different ways. We just say this, you know, these key messages, Christian Klepp  23:58 Yep, for sure. Andrea, I hate to do this, but like this is, this is totally gonna sound like marketing one on one. But let’s, let’s clear the air on this, because I know there’s a lot of there’s probably some marketers out there that that are ashamed to admit they don’t know the difference. But just run it past us one more time. The difference between owned, earned and paid media, please. Andrea Ness  23:58 So I like to refer, yeah. So, you know, I back in my last agency, I was over like I was the activation that director, which was overseen, owned and paid, and previous experience and PR too. So what’s nice about me as media director for my agency is I do see that fuller picture, and we are the first. And even though everyone’s just like, why aren’t you taking. Why aren’t you taking clients money, when I’m like, No, if we own media, is like the foundational house. So think of all your communication channels that that you build, so like your website, organic channels would be, you know, also, you know, helping with owned all your communication materials, your sales materials, everything like that, where you’re just like those, those communication materials that are going out in the world and that they’re seeing, that the client owns and and can update and then earn media is like if you work with a communications team internally, or if you work with a PR team, but really trying to get those messages out there. Earn is sort of not free, but, you know, you ask that you pay PR people, but it’s a when you’re you’re really trying to do like press events, or your put press releases out there in hopes that the TV channels and the newspapers and whatnot will pick up your story. You don’t have a full you can’t tell them exactly what to put in the query, but they might pull quotes from your spokesperson. And so you’re going to try to get out in the news media and doing it that way. So it’s sort of like if you have big events, if you have, like, big mergers and acquisitions, you know you want to work with, like getting those out and getting the paid media. Because what people look, the consumers look and you know, and you know, like B2B audiences too. They read the news. They trust the news. And if it comes from there is, you know, like you feel like you’re, you know, like they’re like, Okay, not only do I have trust in this company, but do. I’m breeding to from news outlets that I trust are also validating. And then paid is where, where we come in, where it’s just like, how do we like, make sure we are targeting your audiences and putting it to the right people in paid spaces. Some of our paid media doesn’t look like paid media, so we have a big thing with content marketing, you know, where we are writing articles, we are writing, you know, interviews, and you are showing up on TV and in in those third party areas where what I like about content marketing is, we get to write the full story so you have and it looks and feels like it’s part of the the publishing company. It is approved by, you know, like USA Today, and, you know, those type of networks, but, but you did that full space where you get to write, write it. So, yeah. Christian Klepp  24:34 Yep, yep, that’s right, that’s right. Okay, so you know, in our previous conversation, you mentioned something along the lines of aligning paid campaigns with earned, owned and social media assets, reduces the friction customer journey and increases recall when audiences are ready to convert. I know that was a lot of marketing speak, but please, please elaborate on that.   Andrea Ness  25:01 And it just goes, it goes back to the point is, you know, even though we’re ready to go to a paid campaign, like, what we keep on, like, wanting to make sure that people usually don’t convert on the first ad exposure that they see. So you really, really do want to make sure that there are so many other ways that they can get to that information. Advertising helps. But, you know, like, like, if you look at you know what your journey is, and really, it’s a great exercise, if you don’t have a customer journey, like, laid out on paper and really, and looking at that, not just for paid media channels, but also, you know, like, here’s what we’re doing, foundational, like, that owned media, you know, and then here’s what you know earned media is doing that, they’re really pushing out. And here’s their focus. But like, you know, people can see an ad, and again, they might not be ready to click on an ad for a variety of reasons, but they know, you know what, I’m gonna go Google them later and get back to it when I have time, or in that moment. Because, again, especially if they’re on platform, seeing an ad, you know, they a lot of they don’t want to just hop off to every click available, you know, to them. They want to stay on the platform. So, you know. So they see an ad, they might Google, you know, the company later, you know. And then organically, they’re going to probably get to your homepage. But if the homepage doesn’t have anything to do with what you just told them, you know, then we’re going to lose them, you know. So they’re going to visit website. Then they might go on LinkedIn, and they might read a thought leadership article from, you know, one of the executives. But if they’re also not talking about that, you know, we’re losing them. But if we are, we know if that’s one of our key message points, and that’s a focus of what that thought leadership piece is, because we know we’re going to be including these key messages. Then it resonates, and then it brings them back over to the website. To be like, oh, you know what? I saw that ad, and now I see, you know, the President talking about this. And it does meet, sensing it from a person point of view, you know, so reading thought leadership, they’re checking LinkedIn even, you know, we always have people review their organic channels, like, even, like, is it something that we should be changing your cover photos on that resonates, you know? Is it something where you already have your organic strategy, but we’re having this marketing campaign over here? Can we make sure we integrate, you know, a couple posts a week, also to include, you know, some of the marketing messages to make sure that we’re hitting this audience as well, you know? And then you’re talking to peers. So if you have their sales people on the ground, if you have your executive leadership team visiting things, are they also, like, told, like, you know, here’s some key points that make sure that you’re you’re also including in your conversations, you know, just so like, at the end of the day that they’re like, Okay, you know, if someone says they elevator pitch for your for your company, like it, it’s more resonate if, if you know that they’re hearing it from different angles, it becomes, it becomes your, your pitch. Christian Klepp  30:50 Fantastic. Thanks for clearing the air on that one. Like, because, because, again, you know, these are, these are some terms that I’ve seen people just throw around loosely. And I’m like, I always keep asking myself, like, do you guys actually even know what the difference is, right? And it’s important, Andrea Ness  31:06 Yeah, and a lot of people don’t think to, because, again, they might be different departments of the client, but they might not think to bring people in the room. But if we’re going in a campaign, and it’s best to have, like, everything work together, to even know from from a marketing side of you, what the PR strategy is, because what? What, what we if we know you’re having a big PR event, why not let that, let that sort and then we will start marketing right after, like, building on that momentum and making sure we’re assisting and aligning with that. Christian Klepp  31:33 Yeah, no, that’s it. That’s it. All right, buckle up, because this, this question, is going to be pretty meat. This one’s pretty meaty. All right, so let’s talk about you’ve brought it up already, but like you know something that B2B marketing teams should focus on, such as long lasting assets. And when I say long lasting assets, we’re talking about websites like you said earlier, executive visibility and thought leadership. So two questions here. So why do you think these often outperform short term paid campaigns? And how can marketers leverage these assets to maximize paid media ROI? Andrea Ness  32:11 Yes, so paid media is, you know, we’re not always in market, you know. So, like, you know, we’re either on or we’re off. But what, what’s nice about those, those other assets are that they they can live on. So if you’re looking at SEO, for instance, if you have, you know, long form videos and testimonials available, available on your website, you know those type of things are going to be so much more like, not more important, but like, really important, where then like, what we like to do too, especially if you have, like, your content marketing strategy, or if we see videos that are really, really performing well organically, or, like, how, how can then we repurpose that for ads like, you know, like clips of the testimonial that that we see, but really is you want stuff to live longer, you know? And what one of the things we like to do with content marketing strategies, where we might pay and work with a Direct Publisher like USA today to have that article in, but what’s best is also to repurpose that article and make it live on your website as well, because it will keep on also driving traffic to your website. The SEO is, you know, great, you’re putting your key points in, but USA might, you know, eventually take that off your page where it doesn’t live there anymore, but you just want to make sure that these things live here, and it drives, you know, to those type of assets. So anything that you can think about search, you know, like anything with YouTube and video showing up, it will always show up on Google searches, you know, and everything like that that will be able to live on. Christian Klepp  33:38 It sounds almost like you’re saying, like, try to get more juice out of the squeeze, right? Andrea Ness  33:42 Yeah, yeah. We learned too, yep. So we go, if you have, like, like, let’s say clients have blog pages, you know, one of the first things that we like to look at too, is what blogs are resonating and hitting home. And like, you know, you’ll see, like, there’s some that are just high up there. And then what you want to do is be like, Why is this resonating? Does this focus on the key message we need to it to, what can we then? How can we repurpose that into different assets? So we would take content marketing articles or blogs that we see that are really like, good and we like, you know, what we got to do a video of this, we have to go in and do like, you know, like, take these points and put them in snippets and do an ad campaign based on those. Christian Klepp  34:19 Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely, oh boy. We’re, we’re, we’re approaching the love it or hate it territory. And you know what I’m talking about, right? Andrea Ness  34:30 Yeah. Christian Klepp  34:30 Metrics, metrics, metrics, metrics, and we can go down a really, really deep rabbit hole with this one, but let’s keep it like top level, right? But based on everything that we’ve been talking about right in this conversation. What are some of the key metrics that you would say B2B marketing teams, you guys should be paying attention to these. Andrea Ness  34:48 Yes, anything where we can integrate within a CMS (Content Management System) and not just looked at the end goal, but what we’re doing is like, like, what are the metrics of their life, of awareness? You know? What are those? Metrics, and people might just think of impressions, you know, but there’s also many different ways too. It’s just like, if you do a survey, like a baseline survey, prior to going into market and getting the lay of the land, and seeing how people feel about your brand, seeing people of what they know about, like, what you need them to know about, and then you go into market. And then after, like, with an eight to 12 months later, you go and then you re test that same survey, and you see how you move the needle. So then it turns just from measuring impressions, you know, for an awareness, but like, you’re really like, not only do we, you know, we hit them, but they’re also listening and understanding. And here’s the data that proves that. So things like that time on site, knowing that, that they’re reading, that they’re really looking into it, they’re not just a click, you know, and you got the website click Content downloads if they’re really looking at those things that are like, what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for us. And then return visitors, are they coming back? You know? Like, because usually, like, if it’s they’re in consideration phases, they’re not going to make the choice right off the date, but if they return. And then other things that we’re looking for in that is like, like Brand Lift, ad lift is that, if we are making a difference where, like, doing like lift studies, where you put you, you serve the content, and then you see, like, if for people who didn’t see this content, like, are they resonating less or more? And so then you’re really knowing that they’re really the people that are seeing your content, are actually paying attention and listening. So therefore we’re moving so definitely different from just like CTR (Click-Through Rate) and leads, and that felt like, like in every stage, like, what makes them trust you more? What makes them consider you more? How are they like going deeper in those funnels? Christian Klepp  36:48 And it’s very interesting that you didn’t say lead conversion, right? And it’s great how you laid that all out and explained it that look back to what you were saying at the beginning of this conversation, that it’s not just about the lead conversion, especially in such a complex ecosystem, you need to talk about building that trust, getting them a little bit closer to well, understanding what it is you do, and making them ultimately choose you over who else is out there in the market, right? So it’s a there’s, um, there’s so many, like nuances, but also complexities involved in that process. Yeah. Andrea Ness  37:25 And we know that when we hit them with those, when we are ready to hit them with those, now it’s time to take a Nash. And we know if they did those other steps first, that conversion rate is much higher than if we try to just make them convert the first time around, Christian Klepp  37:40 absolutely, absolutely, all right. Andrea, get up on your soapbox for this next one. What is a status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with and why? Andrea Ness  37:56 I would say the biggest misconception I see is treating paid media as a primary growth engine, rather than the amplifier. I think it goes back to that. I think right when they say, Okay, we got a budget for paid media, let’s go or don’t, see results, you know, rather than looking at it as just like, we know exactly what like we need to say. We just want to we want an outreach to say it. And because once they hear this, and once they know this, and once they trust us, like it’s doing. So like, really looking at that, like paint media is not the solver and the creator of that, but it’s just amplifying that. Christian Klepp  38:30 So, yeah, it’s a component. It’s important, but it’s a component. It’s one component in the overall, in the overall ecosystem, and it’s one piece of the puzzle. I mean, like, you know, throw in whatever metaphors you want, right? Absolutely. Andrea Ness  38:46 Yeah, one of the things you just say, it’s just like paid media, it just, it doesn’t, it’s not going to fix a wheat strategy. It just exposes it faster. You know, it really is, you know, if you don’t have that ready to go, then we’re just promoting that. You don’t have it to everywhere else. Christian Klepp  39:02 Yeah, and that’s putting it bluntly, right? Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like building a house, and you have a, you know, you have a weak foundation, and then you start, like, coming up with these, you know, putting on, on these fancy roof tiles. And then you have all this expensive, like looking like, like window frames and then just all collapses, right? Fantastic. Andrea, thank you so much for coming on. This is such a this was such a great conversation. And thanks for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. Quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Andrea Ness  39:40 Yes, Andrea Ness, I am the Media Director over at DDM Marketing and Communications, been doing agency life for a little over 25 years. What’s the best part that I feel like I’m strong in is because I pretty much like touched every every department of the agency. So you know, from the creative side. To the account side, you know, over to the, you know, public relations and whatnot. So I really do get that full funnel approach. So, you know, it is a little bit different than other like, maybe media directors out there. We’re just like, we will take your money, let us, like, go and show you some conversions. But it really is like, we want to make sure that we are stewards of of your dollars, and we want to make sure that what we put out there is going to be successful. So, you know, so really focusing on that overall integrated strategy, DDM offers all the components that, you know, one of the reasons why I strongly wanted to work with DDM for for quite a while, is because we are a big team. We have all the departments, and we are able to just, you know, be able to shoot the ideas out there. But when we’re in, when media is in the room too, we are. We would be the first one to be like, You know what? Let’s focus on building that house first, and then come to us in a little bit when you guys had it ready. And then we’ll, we’ll push media. So, yeah, Christian Klepp  40:51 absolutely, absolutely, a true renaissance woman in every, every regard. But once again. Andrea, thank you so much for coming on the show. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Andrea Ness  41:03 All right. Thank you. Christian Klepp  41:04 Bye for now.

IN THIS EPISODE:Content is one way to stand out on LinkedIn but let's face it, not all formats are treated or seen equally by humans and the algorithm. In this episode, we share the strategies behind the top formats, tips and tools to use right now to give your personal brand a boost in the busy LinkedIn feed.CONTACT US:Michelle J Raymond is a globally recognized LinkedIn™️ for business growth speaker, author and consultant. Her services – audit & strategy, LinkedIn training and LinkedIn profile rewrites.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://b2bgrowthco.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michelle B. Griffin is a TEDx speaker and personal brand + PR strategist who helps women experts become recognized authorities and thought leaders in their industries.As the founder of Brand Leaders and creator of the Own Your Lane™ Recognition Roadmap + She's Visible™ women's leadership program, Michelle equips professionals to position their personal brands for recognition, media opportunities and industry impact.LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebgriffin/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Websites: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://michellebgriffin.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OwnYourLane.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy your copy on AmazonThe LinkedIn Branding Book, The Power of Two: Build Your Personal and Business Brand on LinkedIn for Exponential Growth -⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mybook.to/The_LinkedIn_Branding_Book⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MichelleSquared.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OUR BOOKS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The LinkedIn Branding Book + Workbook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Position Yourself Personal Branding Planner⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Business Gold: LinkedIn Company Pages⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION:Simply DM both Michelles on LinkedIn to submit your question for a future episode.LINKSSocial Media Today article on LinkedIn Articles In LLMsKEEP LEARNING HOW B2B TEAMS WIN ON LINKEDIN If you enjoy The LinkedIn Branding Show, you'll also love Michelle J Raymond's other podcast, Social Media for B2B Growth, where she shares practical, no-hacks strategies to help B2B teams turn LinkedIn into real business growth. Subscribe wherever you listen.BE THE EXPERT AI RECOMMENDSAI is now the front door to opportunity forexperts like you. The Recognition Ready™ AI Visibility Scorecard by Michelle B. Griffin helps you understand how AI evaluates your digital presence and what you can do to show up when and where it matters.Download Michelle B. Griffin's RecognitionReady™ AI Visibility Scorecard at  https://michellebgriffin.com/aivisibility/

Most businesses struggle with growth not because they lack effort — but because they lack focus.When you try to serve everyone, your messaging becomes generic, your positioning weakens, and your sales conversations lose impact.In this episode, we break down why defining a clear ideal customer profile (ICP) is one of the most important decisions you can make, and how narrowing your focus actually creates more opportunities — not less.We also explore:Why broad targeting leads to weak messagingHow to think about your ideal client in a practical wayThe difference between activity and real progress in salesWhy focus improves both confidence and conversionThis is Episode 2 of the How To Get More Clients mini-series.If you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will challenge common sales assumptions and help you build a more effective sales process.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

How to Leverage Brand Differentiation for Massive B2B Growth In the increasingly competitive and saturated world of B2B SaaS and tech, clear brand differentiation and strategic positioning are the most overlooked levers for sustainable growth. While often dismissed, these are critical components in helping companies directly shorten sales cycles and lower their customer acquisition costs (CAC). When done the right way, they can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B marketing teams develop clear brand differentiation strategy that drives measurable revenue? That's why we're talking to Chantelle Little (Founder and CEO, Tiller Digital), who shares her expertise on how to leverage brand differentiation for massive B2B growth. During our conversation, Chantelle discussed why clear brand differentiation and positioning are underrated growth levers for SaaS and tech companies, especially regarding shorten sales cycles and lowering CAC. She also highlighted the importance of strategic alignment and effective positioning, particularly in the face of increasing competition and the market's maturity. Chantelle discussed why understanding customer pain points is crucial, and how to leverage AI for audience insights. She provided advice on conducting competitor analyses, gathering customer feedback, and leveraging metrics like unaided recall and CAC to quantify brand performance. Chantelle also underscored the necessity of aligning product marketing and sales teams for impactful branding and scaling. https://youtu.be/IF4TaI0QAfU Topics discussed in episode: [00:00] Why brand differentiation is a non-negotiable now in the world of SaaS [02:36] Why AI is a double-edged sword: great for starting positioning work, but dangerous if human judgment isn’t layered in [08:40] The pushback founders give (“it’s too early”) and why those that invest early remove friction from fundraising, hiring, and conversion  [11:49] Key pitfalls to avoid regarding brand differentiation (and branding in general) [20:14] How to make brand ROI tangible: work backward from customer lifetime value (CLV), target a specific CAC reduction, and show the revenue math in founder language  [28:34] The 4-step positioning framework:  1) Define your market and competitive alternatives,  2) Gather customer interviews, surveys and competitor audits,  3) Mine for real differentiation beyond table stakes,  4) Operationalize across the website, sales decks and outbound  [39:31] Metrics for proving brand’s impact: unaided recall, branded search growth, direct traffic, CAC trends, conversion rates, sales cycle length, and inbound lead quality Companies and links mentioned: Chantelle Little on LinkedIn  Tiller Digital G2 Transcript Christian Klepp, Chantelle Little Chantelle Little  00:00 One key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing. It can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. Christian Klepp  00:19 It’s something that tends to get overlooked in the world of B2B SaaS and tech, yet it’s a crucial component in helping companies to shorten sales cycles and lower Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) I’m talking about clear brand differentiation and positioning. When done the right way, it can transform everything from strategic alignment across teams to campaign effectiveness and sales velocity. So how can B2B Marketing Teams develop clear brand differentiation for growth? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Chantelle Little, who will be answering this question. She’s the founder and CEO of Tiller Digital that helps B2B, SaaS and tech companies scale through strategic customer centric marketing. Tune in to find out more about what the speed to be Marketers Mission is okay, and away we go. Chantelle Little, welcome to the show. Chantelle Little  01:13 Thanks for having me, Christian. I appreciate it. Christian Klepp  01:15 Great to have you on the show. You know, we had such a great pre interview conversation, and I’m really looking forward to this discussion because, man, this is something that’s so important. And I’m not saying this because I also do branding, but it’s just something that I think is really important. I personally feel from my own experience, it’s something that tends to get overlooked a lot, especially in in the world that you operate in, which is in B2B, SaaS and tech, all right, so I’m going to keep the audience in suspense a little while longer, while I go through the first question. Chantelle Little  01:48 Okay, sounds good. Christian Klepp  01:49 So you’re on a mission to help B2B SaaS teams clarify their story, sharpen positioning, and build websites that drive pipeline. And who doesn’t want that? I think is the better question. But for this conversation, I’d like to narrow it down to the topic of how clear brand differentiation and positioning shorten sales cycles and lower CAC. So for those that don’t know what CAC is, it’s Customer Acquisition Cost. So let’s kick off the conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. So question number one, why do you believe that brand differentiation is the most underrated growth lever in B2B? And question number two, as a follow up, where do you see many B2B SaaS companies struggle? Chantelle Little  02:36 Yeah, well, maybe I can kick off with the differentiation and positioning pieces. I think one thought that comes to mind is that differentiation from a branding perspective, perspective has always mattered. But the market has changed a lot in in the last decade, but even in the last 18 months, last two years, it has shifted a lot. One of the things that has changed so much is that the SaaS market in particular has matured a lot over the last number of years. And I love to follow all the stats on what’s happening in the market. And if you just consider that, we’re like mid 2020s, and it’s like the SaaS market is roughly 300, 400 billion. And a lot of you know data out there suggesting that that market could double between now and 2030 so in the next four years, kind of thing, we might see that market reach closer to 700 billion. So I share that, because a decade ago, when people were entering the SaaS market, there were fewer that. There was less competition. There were fewer people to actually compete with. By nature, there were fewer buyers as well, because less companies have shifted a lot in terms of their use of SaaS products in operating their businesses, but the market has shifted so it’s more mature, there’s more competition, there’s higher expectations that come with that as well. And then the other thing you know, in addition to saturation in the market, is that the barriers to entry have dramatically lowered, right? So I think last week, I was reading an article about, yet again, another company that has used lovable to launch a you know, product in market within two weeks and generated millions of dollars of revenue. I’m worried about misstating the facts so, but it was like millions of revenue in a short period of time. So when the barriers are lower, the market is saturated, there’s more of a need for differentiation, and I’m really passionate about that, because if we communicate the same story, and if we communicate sameness, we’re never going to win. AI (Artificial Intelligence), obviously lovable is a good example of an AI platform companies are using, but it also has accelerated the ability to create products, but also it is contributing to sameness, like if you put your your competitors into AI and you ask it to spit out positioning for you and your key messaging, it’s a great start, and I’m actually. A huge advocate of using AI for those those steps, but probably talk about that a little bit later in the podcast too. But it’s really critical that human judgment is layered into that that work. Otherwise, you know, brands will be just spit out from AI, and by nature, they will probably become more similar, not more distinct. So those are a couple to answer. Kind of the first question on why I think it’s underrated. I think if companies can really nail that, it really helps with getting traction, and not just, you know, a little bubble of success, but long term traction and long term performance, which is really key. That’s a that’s a big one for brand. So hopefully that that helps, and then I could go into, like, some of the things where I see companies really struggling. I think there’s a few areas I think that a lot of companies, really, if I’m talking early stage for a moment, a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, or I’ve seen, have really struggled to understand the power of getting those foundational brand pieces figured out. So if I use positioning as an example, if you don’t get your positioning correct, all the money invested after that really might, you know, not work in the way that you’re hoping it will work. So it’s kind of going to that foundational layer, and really making sure the foundation is solid, and then building off of that foundation worth saying, hard to get it right. You know, like the first time, you’re constantly iterating on your positioning, not just in the early stage, but as you scale up, you know, I go back to our positioning as a company every year, if not more frequently than that, and you start to tune and experiment and hone it. But I think the core piece is that if you don’t position yourself, you will be positioned by the market, and it may not be in your favor. So being intentional and strategic about that, it may be seemingly insignificant, but it’s really, really critical in terms of getting momentum. So that’s just kind of one thing is like undervaluing brand, which I know we’re going to talk about more here today. Christian Klepp  07:14 Absolutely, absolutely no thanks for sharing that. And that’s something that like, really, you know, when you brought it up, it makes me clench my teeth and I just, I just like, you know, because every time, I mean, not always, you know, certainly there’s, there’s companies that we work with that, um, they either do get it or they’re open to a different perspective, right? Chantelle Little  07:37 Yeah. Christian Klepp  07:38 But more often than not, especially in B2B, I always find that there’s always got to be somebody down there that pushes back on the whole branding aspect and says that’s a complete waste of our time. Chantelle Little  07:50 Yes. Christian Klepp  07:51 Right? And I feel, and perhaps this has been your experience as well. But not to sound harsh, but you know, ignorance is bliss. Chantelle Little  07:57 Yes. Christian Klepp  07:59 Because, you know, if people don’t understand something the dangerous Well, if I don’t understand it, then perhaps it’s not that important, and nothing can be further from the truth. Chantelle Little  08:11 Yeah. Christian Klepp  08:11 Right. So what’s your take on that? Because, I mean, you must, you know, in your in your day to day dealings with clients, especially in those sectors that you serve, you probably get some pushback on, well, why should we do this foundation piece? Why should we do this branding like, you know, we it just sounds like it’s gonna run up, you know, our costs, it’s, it’s, it’s more investment. Why should we do that? We should focus on generating pipeline instead. But what’s your take on that? Chantelle Little  08:40 Yeah, I definitely have experienced that, so it’s a great question. And have come up that come up against that a lot, and I don’t like generalizations, but generally speaking, a lot of founders that you know, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with and work with over the years are not necessarily coming from a marketing background, and often not coming from a sales background as well. They they usually have a specific area of expertise. It could be domain knowledge, it could be subject matter knowledge, but they’re very focused on the product itself, especially in the SaaS space. So it’s, it’s very product centric. And that’s good, because if, if all you have is sales and marketing and you don’t have a product, then it doesn’t work. Either it’s it’s really about this balance and this, this tension between the two. So the pushback that I often get is that it’s too early to invest in brand. That’s the the one that I hear quite frequently. It’s not worth the investment, or it’s too early, or we need to have 100 customers before we’re going to spend that much money or that much effort. And I think some of it stems from limited data pools. We only have so much data, and we only have so many customers we can speak to that spending money on it. Now we’re making too many hypotheses. So why would we over invest? And like I said, a balance is needed because you don’t want to over invest. But the pattern that I see sometimes downstream is that those founders are sometimes struggling to get investment, struggling to attract top talent, struggling to, you know, convince beta users to convert into paid customers. There there’s some downstream effects that happen and they offer. There’s nuance to its of course, that changes by the nature of the business. But my observation is that founders that are willing to invest, you know that reasonable amount in brand see friction removed from a lot of those different kind of goals that they’re trying to achieve. So I think that that’s, that’s super, super key, is that, you know, proper positioning, proper differentiation, and I mean even going to the visual side of branding as well. Is that credible brand? It really helps, especially in a world where there is a lot of skepticism, right? Like, is that fake? Is that real? Like, am I really going to spend money on that? It concerns compliance, like, the list goes on. You know? How do I know this is credible? And brand plays a really, really big, critical role in that. So I do see that pattern quite a bit, and I’ve seen those that are willing to take the investment, and I’ve seen friction be removed. Christian Klepp  11:30 Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I’m going to move us on to the next question about key pitfalls. So if we’re talking about marketing teams within B2B SaaS or tech. What are some of these key pitfalls that you would say they should be avoiding, and what should they do instead?   Chantelle Little  11:49 Yeah, so there’s a couple that come to mind. One is, one key pitfall I see is just treating brand as a cosmetic exercise, right? So it’s really, especially when people are, you know, not super familiar with brand, not super familiar with marketing, it can be really easy to, you know, associate logo with brand, and it’s, it’s a lot more comprehensive than that. So I think just remembering that just because you have a nice logo, it doesn’t mean that you’ve clearly positioned yourself. Just because you have a really strong, you know, a nice looking website, it doesn’t mean that the value has been clearly articulated and that you’ve differentiated yourself from, you know, competitors, and that all can go go right through. So it really impacts, you know, sales. If you don’t get those, those P those, those specific foundations in place. So I think you know do instead is you want to start with the positioning as the most critical piece, clarify what market you’re playing in. So this is, like, really practical, but like, clarify what market you’re playing in, because you want to make it easy for buyers to assess you against competitive alternatives. This is really challenging if you’re creating a new category, because the competitive alternatives are less clear. But if you’re entering a market where there are more competitive alternatives, like really making sure that you, you know, figure out what market you’re playing in and what value you’re you’re delivering. So that’s kind of like a couple of key things. So that’s one pitfall. The other one that I definitely could talk about for a while is just over reliance on internal perspective. So this is again challenging, and I see it at different stages, because, you know, I’ve worked with, you know, different founders or leadership teams at variety of different scales, some pre revenue, most in sort of a mid market growth phase, a rate up through it to enterprise. So you see this in different ways, shapes and forms. When you’re in the earlier stages, you have a lot of assumptions that you’re making as an internal team. So the more beta users you can talk to, the more potential customers you can talk to, and if none of that’s available, leverage look alike audiences like get as much input as you can to shape your strategy. It’s quite high risk, and it’s usually ineffective to sit in a room with two people that like your idea, and just brainstorm and build a strategy, because it’s not informed by much other than a couple people’s perspectives. So that’s that’s kind of one at larger scales. This gets really tricky, because if you have an executive team of 10 people, right, and then you have other layers of leadership, so Csuite, and maybe there’s VPs (Vice President) and director levels. It’s really tricky for all those people to get into a room and start to debate what makes sense, because sometimes ego gets in the way. You know, people have their own unique perspective, and then, as a marketer, you’re kind of left with trying to integrate all of that. So I’m a big believer in getting customer feedback, be it interviews, be it surveys, you know, if you’re a B2B tech company or SaaS company, looking at competitor reviews on G2 like, looking for patterns in vocabulary, in how people talk about pain solutions, whatever it might be if you don’t have G2 profiles, like, you know, you can go and get look at your competitors, G2 profiles, and start to look at what people are complaining about and what they’re celebrating about your competitors. And you can mine for patterns there. So that’s, that’s another pitfall is just like over reliance on on internal perspective, and then the the cascading effect of all the assumptions that are made in that in that process as well. Christian Klepp  15:42 Yeah, yeah. No, I was, um, I was kind of having a little bit of a chuckle to myself when you said over relying internal perspective. Because, um, it’s, um, I think, I think they’ve diagnosed this, um, this malaise. It’s um, it’s analysis paralysis and opinion. Chantelle Little  16:00 Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christian Klepp  16:03 Yeah. I tried to say that with a very serious face, yes, but, um, but it’s but it’s so true though, right? Like you just mentioned it, and I’ve been in situations. I’ve certainly been in meetings where there was this constant and very heated, like debate about positioning on what the brand stands for from an internal perspective. And it was usually like, unfortunately, more often than not, the loudest voice in the room at once, right? Chantelle Little  16:30 Yeah. Christian Klepp  16:31 Or, depending on the person’s level of seniority as well. And I would then see that falter when they take it to market. Chantelle Little  16:41 Yes. Christian Klepp  16:41 Because, as you rightfully pointed out, just because they agreed upon it in the meeting room, that doesn’t mean that the market agrees with that person. Chantelle Little  16:49 Yes, yes, yeah. Real balance to to to find, and it’s not easy, but it is also surprising how many companies are reluctant. I mean, I talk to B2B, SaaS companies, day in and day out, and there is a reluctancy to ask the customer for a case study or to ask the customer for an interview or survey. And I think some of it comes from, you know, it takes time and energy, which is a very precious commodity in today’s world. But sometimes, I think deep down, people don’t really want to know because they’re trying to protect something, and that’s really tricky. So I think a growth mindset and being willing to accept that customer feedback can be quite, quite powerful, because it creates an ally and ambassador from the customer, not always, but that’s the vision, that’s the goal, right? So if done properly, it really can create that. And then now we have fuel to put in the marketing engine that will help us go further, faster. And that’s a really exciting thing. Christian Klepp  17:57 It is an exciting thing. It is also a very thin line to walk, because I’ve been in a situation previously where I was a product marketer and I had to go out into the field with salespeople and listen to the way that they would conduct, conduct the meetings with the prospects, and listen to the concerns, the objections and the questions and whatnot, right? And from there to your point is, we can see what the prospect really thinks about the product. Chantelle Little  18:26 Yes. Christian Klepp  18:27 Versus what the you know, sometimes when the sales come back, they say, oh yeah. The meeting, the meeting went well. They said they think about it. But when you’re actually there in the meeting, then you actually hear what their concerns are, it’s like, yeah, they like it however they have, they had all of these different questions and concerns, and if that’s not captured in some shape or form, yeah, then anything that we put out from a marketing perspective might not be relevant to them, might not help them, might not also move the sales closer to to getting a deal. Chantelle Little  19:02 Yeah. Well, and I love that you bring that up Christian, because that kind of reminds me of just the other challenge of scaling brand. It’s at like scaling brand, right? And how it can fracture as you try to scale it. Christian Klepp  19:15 Yeah. Chantelle Little  19:15 And one of the things that you you mentioned is just that alignment between product marketing and sales like that is one of the biggest challenges that companies face as they scale. And so it’s like, if sales isn’t, you know, having these great conversations, they’re getting clear on objections, not feeding that back to marketing. And if marketing doesn’t have that Intel or those inputs, it gets difficult to learn from every opportunity to improve conversion performance and improve performance in general. So, yeah, I love that. It’s, it’s really key. Christian Klepp  19:47 Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. For sure. We already talked about this a little bit, you know, like how to deal with pushback, especially from founders. And you know, more often than not, they’re not from a marketing background. They’re not from us. Sales background. But I think the question that I want to ask you is basically, how do you convince them, or how do you prove to them, I think is the better word. How do you prove to them that brand differentiation and positioning can indeed shorten sales cycles and CAC. Chantelle Little  20:14 Yeah, I think when speaking to founders and early stage leadership teams, I think it’s important to speak their language. So there’s like, when I’m when I’m talking to a CMO of a, you know, $80 million company, you are dealing with different context and perspective and experience. And so you can kind of adjust your your your pitch and your conversation around more common marketing related terminology. But I’d say when you’re talking to founders, it’s really important for them to see this in context of revenue and a context of how it’s going to really, really move the needle. And so there’s a few different things. Like, there’s different ways that you can that you can position it, but I think really understanding there’s a couple things that I love to understand is, I love to understand about average deal size. Like, I like to understand, okay, so how much money do we anticipate we can make off of this customer in one year? But more important than that, how much do we think that you’re going to make off the customer over the course of the lifetime of the customer? So is it three years, you know, lifetime value, five years lifetime value, whatever that might be, whatever the customer lifetime value is. That’s actually more important than the the annual recurring revenue for one year or one month, right? So if, if I know that, then it becomes easier to work backwards and figure out, okay, so if that customer is worth $20,000 to you over the lifetime of the customer, how much would you be willing to spend to get that customer? If, if that customer is worth 700,000 or a million over the lifetime of the customer. How much would you spend there? And kind of get into some of the unit economics of it, and then help them understand what makes sense to spend to acquire that customer. And I think, like, like I said, talking in context of revenue, talking in context of, you know, the cost to acquire the lead is really helpful. And so let’s just, you know, use a simple example. A couple weeks back, I was speaking to someone, they were sharing that their their cack was closer to $1,000 and based on their price point, it just didn’t make sense. Like the economics only work when we run the numbers. It only works if we can get that down to three or $400 so the question is, how do you move the needle from a CAC of 1000 to a CAC of 300 to 400 and there’s different levers we can pull right? But when you know that that’s the target, we have to reduce the cost to acquire the customer down to 300 400 for all the economics to work and for you to put more money into this and to really scale it now we can start to look for all the friction that’s in the process that or that’s in the buyer journey, the user journey, depending on what context we’re talking about, and remove every little bit of friction. And when we start to see that, if, okay, if we remove that friction, if we change the messaging, if we do better message mismatching or better message matching from the ad to the landing page. If we, you know, maybe improve the brand, because right now, you feel early stage, and we could through better visuals, make you, you know, position you better amongst your four competitors that you’re trying to beat. If we start to change those little levers, then we can start to, you know, incrementally bring down that number. And you have to be careful talking about this, because there’s so many other things that are variables, right, that influence costs to acquire a customer that are outside of, you know, our ability to influence. But I think talking about it in context of the numbers is most helpful, because now we have really concrete goals all anchored to trying to achieve something that could be scaled and sometimes the answer might be, you need to increase your price, like I’ve come along that before as well. It doesn’t work, not because the CAC is wrong, but because the price is actually wrong. When I look at the competitive landscape, you could double your price, and, you know, not price yourself out of market. So there’s, there’s different levers, and that’s actually what’s so fun about marketing, is that it’s like being a mad scientist and sitting there with all your beakers and putting different things in there and seeing what you can achieve, like what you can create, in terms of results that that is what it’s it’s like. So I think that’s, that’s really key. So I think, like, just really practically as it relates to sales cycles, if you have weak positioning, it usually leads to confusion. Buyers are confused. You know, now I’m having to give repeated explanations of what we do. There’s the the marketing website, but now the sales team is having to, like, repeat or re explain or re educate or change the prospects perspective, and then objections end up getting rooted in misunderstandings, like in the sales process, right? So if we have strong positioning, the opposite would be true. Now we probably have better self qualification, so the quality of leads in your pipeline would be going up. In theory, that’s what would happen, right? We’d have easier comparison. The competitor can compare you better against competitive alternatives. Like it starts to make more sense, less friction, less cognitive load. And then, you know, it will someone will move through the pipeline with less friction. So usually shorter sales cycles. That really matters, right? If you could turn 60 day sales cycles into 30, like, what would that mean for you from a cash flow perspective, right? So it’s kind of looking at at all of those different variables. Christian Klepp  25:51 I love it. I love it. When you talked about the mad scientist that you know, the thing that came to mind was like, Dr. Frankenstein saying. Chantelle Little  25:59 Yeah, exactly that. Christian Klepp  26:03 But I love how you started out with as contradictory as it sounds, it’s very profound working backwards. Chantelle Little  26:11 Yes. Christian Klepp  26:12 What’s the end game? How much? How much is a customer worth to you, right? And working from there, because if you don’t start out like that, everything is really a guesstimation for for lack of a better description. But going back to something that you said, which I thought is really interesting, because at least I’ve seen this a lot. Do you think a lot of this the issue with differentiation and positioning as it pertains to SaaS and tech, also stems from a, this might sound oversimplified, but it stems from a lack of an actual lack of understanding of who the who the customer is, Chantelle Little  26:53 Yes. Christian Klepp  26:53 And what their pain points are, and how you have the ability to address those pain points, versus like, Oh, look at, look at our platform with all these neat features? Chantelle Little  27:02 Yes, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s, it’s hard, like, really, simply, it’s really hard to serve someone if you don’t know their problem first, Christian Klepp  27:12 Right. Chantelle Little  27:13 Right? And I think that’s why I don’t remember the exact quote, and I should look it up, because I keep misquoting it. Then that whole concept of, like, if I had to solve a problem, I’d spend 90% of the time solving the problem, and then whatever, 10% of the time executing against that to actually solve the problem, something like that, right? It is. It is some of that. It’s kind of like if we don’t know the problem, if we don’t know the pain, it’s really hard to solve it. So I think putting adequate energy into understanding, defining the pain, is really critical. Christian Klepp  27:47 Absolutely, absolutely, okay, you’ve given us quite a bit now, but like, walk us through these steps, right? Like, like, like, without that magic formula of yours, I’m joking. We know. We know that it’s not magic. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into this, right? Chantelle Little  28:02 Yeah. Christian Klepp  28:03 Walk us through these steps that that process, right? That helps B2B SaaS teams find their differentiation and strategic positioning. So what? What steps do they need to take? How? How do they? How can they, I should say, conduct research, generate insights, and move rapidly. I think the name of the game is speed too. Like a lot of these guys, especially founder led, they don’t have five years to prove what they have us working. Chantelle Little  28:31 Yeah. Christian Klepp  28:32 We’re talking about months here, right? Chantelle Little  28:34 Yeah, yeah, no, that’s, that’s such a great question. So I’ll try to do this in a way that’s easy to, you know, kind of explain so, so the first part is really defining the market. So in order for us to do positioning like step one, define the market, a couple key questions you can ask is, what cat or category are you in? Right? That’s, that’s really key. And then, what are the competitive alternatives that exist in the market? I’m a big April Dunford fan. I like, there’s a lot of frameworks that there are a lot of books out there about this, but she uses the language of competitive alternatives. And I’ve really, I’ve really taken that and leveraged that, because I think you want to understand who people what I find is that when you start to ask, what are the competitive alternatives? You might realize that the category you originally said you play in is not quite the right category. So if you ask both questions, you can use them to hone in on the right the right spot for early stage founders. I think narrowing in early is really key, and then you can expand really intentionally and strategically later down the line. So what I mean by that is it’s really hard to get traction with the new product in market when you’re trying to solve 30 problems. You know, we’ve talked, talked to so many founders, where it’s like, well, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. We’re solving this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and and so it gets difficult because you need traction. So it’s either, you know, simplify the number of problems you’re solving, or maybe simplify how many industries you’re trying to go after, like start in your best hypothesis industry, get traction there, and then expand later. But I think it’s just being careful, careful about that from a positioning perspective. So that’s kind of step one, just a couple key questions you can ask. Step two is gathering those inputs. So, you know, for customer interviews, you know that’s something that you can do on your own. You can work with an agency to help you do that. I know that that can be really challenging to get people’s time, but for that, it’s really about designing the right script. It’s about making sure that you kind of maintain some continuity through those through those interviews, so that you start to be able to mine for patterns versus changing up the question set every time, leveraging customer surveys. I mean that that requires that you have an outreach list, but often you can, you know, build a bit of an outreach list from the network of folks on your team. But I would say on that one to be really, really careful about narrowing in on the right persona, like the right person, so that you don’t get, you know, the wrong type of input and the wrong type of data. One other thing that you know is really effective is doing a competitor messaging audit. So if you pull up all your competitor websites, and you can use AI to also help you get a start on it, at least you can pull up those websites and basically try to create a bit of a map, right? So it’s like, what is the positioning of each competitor and then what’s their core value prop? Like, that’s that’s also really helpful, outside of positioning. What’s a core value prop? And then, what are some of the key messages that are being highlighted? And then, what proof are they stating? So, is it case studies? Is it testimonials? Is it data points? Like, if that company is saying, we reduce time by 20% or whatever, like, What is the proof that they’re attaching to the message. And again, if you create a bit of a map of those competitors, you can start to see patterns where there’s overlap, and you can also start to see where there’s open gaps, like places you could play that aren’t directly competing. So it can be quite strategic. It can be a lot of fun. You can leverage AI. You could bring all that data back to your team and analyze it. So that’s another one. The review mining, like looking at G2 reviews, that’s really helpful as well, for looking for patterns, again, for all of these things, I we definitely have, you know, really advanced the way that we use AI to do these things, so doing them, but then also validating, making sure you’re using deep research. Sometimes we use multiple platforms so to see if we’re getting the same data from multiple platforms. But I think when you have all this data, AI can be really helpful for analyzing and looking for patterns. So that’s a really useful, useful case. And then internal workshops. I mean, if you’ve got someone on your team that you know is able to run an internal workshop, then that would be a great way to gather feedback from your team and have some of that necessary dialog to drive alignment and pull from the different perspectives on your team. In a perfect world, it’s great if you have a sales perspective, a marketing perspective, a product perspective, and if you’re unsure how to run these workshops, one that’s really useful is just doing a jobs, pains and gains, type or jobs to be done. Using that framework, even that could be really helpful to try map out, you know, the jobs that you believe your customer is doing. And then you can use customer interviews and surveys to validate some of that. And then, to your point, Christian about speed, we actually were. We’ve, we’ve had this a couple times with some customers that we’ve worked with, and even for our own testing, where we will use third party, you know, B2B platforms to, you know, interview look alike audiences. And there’s a whole science to that. So it’s not as simple as just going paying money and then, boom, you get 50 people’s feedback. You have to be super strategic about how you structure the surveys and the questions and what tests you run. But that’s beautiful, because now, 48 hours from now, you’re getting feedback. Now you’re able to leverage that, put that in AI look for patterns. It can be quite helpful when, when speed is the game. So that’s, that’s another one. So that’s kind of step two, gathering the real inputs. Step three is your mining for that true differentiation. A couple things that I’ll just quickly mention here is like, really try avoid table stakes. I see this time and time again, and even it’s very tempting to say, well, we’re we’ve got great customer service, whatever company is going to claim they do. Now, the customer interviews might say something different, and the customer, the competitor reviews online, might say something different, but like, is that sticky enough as a differentiation? Or like, even when people talk about their brand personality, it’s like, well, we’re professional. Well, that’s table stakes, right? Like, everyone’s expecting a level of professionalism. Christian Klepp  34:58 We hope so. Chantelle Little  34:59 We hope, we hope, right? So it’s like, try avoid that, or try avoid really vague adjectives. Like, get like, really specific. Don’t be satisfied with like, the vague. So here’s, like, the process where, now that you’ve done all that pre work, right now, you’re trying to, like, look for specific strengths and just where that real uniqueness is. And I believe that when it’s really grounded in real customer language, or maybe it’s lookalike audience language, it drives better performance from a marketing perspective. So that’s something to really look for. And step four, of course, like once you’ve actually found the differentiation, now you have to operationalize all of that, right? So that’s a whole other thing. I could go on and on and on, but it’s a whole other thing, because it can’t just live in a slide deck or a pitch deck. Now we have to figure out, how do we change the website, our sales decks, our email, outbound emails, like literally every touch point so that it aligns with that positioning, because everything that’s out of alignment is going to create confusion and potentially introduce friction. So that’s kind of the other part. So I’ll stop there. Does that help? Christian Klepp  36:15 I think you’ve got enough material here for an audio book. Chantelle Little  36:21 So that’s not the first time I’ve been described as robust. Christian Klepp  36:27 But jokes aside. I mean, I think that that was, that was quite comprehensive, and thank you for walking us through that. And by appreciate the amount of detail that you’ve provided here, because it is, again, one of the reasons why we agreed to discuss this topic on, you know, on this episode, is because this is a component, a vital component, that tends to get overlooked because they feel like, like it’s not such a big deal, or it’s something that’s easy to come up with. And now that you’ve met, you know, you’ve put in the effort to, like, walk us through what that actual process looks like. Chantelle Little  37:04 Yeah. Christian Klepp  37:06 We hopefully have dispelled that myth of how easy this is. Because, you know, as you’ve rightfully pointed out, it’s not, I mean, even if you Yes, of course you can use AI. I mean, like, we use it too, but there’s a certain way to use it and leverage it, where it generates, like you said, it helps to aggregate data, it helps to identify patterns, and it helps to generate those insights that also create true differentiation. Chantelle Little  37:34 Yes. Christian Klepp  37:35 None of this nonsense. And you know where I’m going with this, like you know, our true brand, our true differentiation, you know, lies in our people. Chantelle Little  37:43 Right? Christian Klepp  37:44 No, it does not right. Chantelle Little  37:45 Yeah, yeah. Christian Klepp  37:47 It lies in your ability to solve your you know, whatever challenges and problems and pain points your customer is facing, whatever those may be. Chantelle Little  37:56 Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think I love that you said that, because I think we also are living in this like world where outcomes, there’s so much focus on outcomes. So if you have a B in the B2B SaaS space, you know, saying that we have good customer service, saying that we have good people, those are, those are how we create value. They’re not the value. Christian Klepp  38:21 Right? Chantelle Little  38:21 So it’s like the the, you know, old challenge of people that focus on their features versus focusing on the value that they’re creating. And in today’s world, you can’t stand out if you don’t lean into outcomes, Christian Klepp  38:34 Correct. Chantelle Little  38:35 Right? So, Christian Klepp  38:36 I’ll come I’ll come focused, I’ll come driven. Chantelle Little  38:39 Yes, Christian Klepp  38:40 Right? I’m love it or hate it, right? Metrics, you know, at some point, especially in the world of SaaS and tech, which is, you know, very technical. Sorry, I’m trying to, try not to use any puns here, but, like, you know, right? But, but, but you, you will have to, especially if you’re dealing with founders and people that are have a very technical background, they need to be able to, like, grab on to something tangible. Chantelle Little  39:09 Yes. Christian Klepp  39:10 And sometimes, and I hate to say this myself, because I am that person that that lives and breathes branding, but sometimes that’s not something that’s that’s tangible to them, so you have to show them. This is working. We are making progress here. So what kind of metrics would you suggest marketers pay attention to when it comes to differentiation and positioning? Chantelle Little  39:31 Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question, and you’ve already alluded to the fact that measuring brand performance is like the thing that every marketer wishes they could do with higher degrees of precision and accuracy, because when they’re sitting, especially we work with so many mid mark, mid market, you know, marketers, and I hear about them going into the Csuite meetings, the board meetings, and I hear how difficult it is for them to get that approval on brand investments. Because, like everyone wants demand, we want x, you know, pipeline by the end of this year. We want, you know, this many (MQL) Marketing Qualified Leads by, you know, July, whatever it is, right? There’s these high expectations for performance, and usually more tendency to focus on demand investments than brand. So I think there’s a number of metrics like, I could go on and on and probably do an audio book on that one too Christian. But the one that I thought was worth maybe highlighting, because I think it’s not talked about enough, is this concept of unaided recall. And it’s it’s a little bit tricky to measure that as well. But I think what, what conceptually, you know, I try to encourage founders to think about is that at any given point in time, only 5% of your market is, like in market ready to buy. So if we run any demand campaigns, we are focused on converting that 5% into customers, right? But the other 95% we don’t want to alienate them. We don’t want to forget about want to forget about them, because they’re not in market today, but they might be tomorrow. They might be next month, next quarter, next year. So how can we build some mental availability with that 95% so that when they go in market and they become in the category of the 5% they think of your brand first, that’s, that’s the una like the recall piece. So typically, you know, we encourage people to think about what buying triggers, what moments in time happen that essentially prompt someone to move from the 95% that aren’t in market to the 5% that are in market. And then we try build campaigns and marketing around those buying triggers. But the key point is, is that we do that to build mental availability, right? So I think of it like this when you think of this category. So I’ll just use (CRM) customer relationship management. We think of this category of customer relationship management, who comes to mind, right? HubSpot, Salesforce. Christian Klepp  42:00 Yeah, right. Chantelle Little  42:01 So you kind of want to be the one that comes to mind. So it’s about really building that so. So I think measuring, like unaided, unaided recall, maybe aided recognition too. There’s you can. You can use branded search growth to help, you know, figure that out. Sometimes branded search growth, you know, you have to think about that in context. But are we seeing more people directly search for our solution? You know that could be an indication that they are aware of your company and your brand. There could be direct traffic trends that could be measured, but you’re trying to really think about if, if someone was prompted, like, if someone has pain, and that buying trigger happens like I now have pain. Do they think of your brand first, right? And I mean, some people will say, well, that’s hard to achieve because HubSpot Salesforce, they have these huge they have these huge budgets. And I’m not, you know, trying to gloss over that. That is a reality, but I think that there are targeted ways to build brand awareness and that mental availability and measure those metrics and help boards and Csuite understand the value of that so that they will approve brand investments, because when we invest in brand demand, performs better, right? Christian Klepp  43:19 Amen. Amen. Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, gosh, I wish. I wish more people would be saying something like that, but you said something which I thought was like, almost like a key phrase in this conversation, almost like an outcome. It’s like the it’s the logical, like, next step. It’s this building mental availability. Chantelle Little  43:40 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:41 Because that’s really a big part of what this exercise is. Chantelle Little  43:46 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:47 Especially in B2B, as you, as you rightfully pointed out that not everybody’s out there like, oh yeah, I need to get me some of that software. Let me pull up my credit card. Chantelle Little  43:55 Yes. Christian Klepp  43:56 It doesn’t happen that way, right? It usually is a much longer process. It usually involves a buying committee of anywhere between four to six people, maybe even more. Chantelle Little  44:05 Yes. Christian Klepp  44:05 Right? And they they do, you know, they do their own due diligence and research, and what they find online is extremely important. Chantelle Little  44:14 Yes. Christian Klepp  44:16 To your point, about like, not just the review sites, but what you know and what other people are saying, but you know, what are people online commenting, with regards to the software? What’s out there that’s available? Like, okay, if you, if you, if you Google or, or in the this day and age, you do AI search, what is AI saying? Chantelle Little  44:35 Yes, Christian Klepp  44:36 Right? Chantelle Little  44:37 Yeah. Christian Klepp  44:37 All important. Chantelle Little  44:38 Yeah. And I think, obviously, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say, of course, you want to measure measure like branded related metrics, like we’ve talked about. But I think you know, it’s also important to be measuring your your CAC, right? Because, like, some people aren’t even measuring their CAC. Christian Klepp  44:55 That’s right. Chantelle Little  44:56 And so measuring CAC is important, because if we want to prove you. That increased investment in brand reduces cap. We also have to measure CAC right conversion rates like, that’s a that’s another thing that you we can be measuring on the web level and paid campaigns. We can measure sales cycles, whether they’re shortening right. These are things brand influences. So ideally, we and we measure, you know, how brand is performing, and then we measure the things, the things that we’re trying to improve, right? CAC, conversion rates, sales cycles, all that kind of stuff, quality, right? Inbound quality. What’s the sales team say about the quality of these leads? Christian Klepp  45:34 Absolutely. Chantelle Little  45:35 All those pieces could be measured, and it will help us prove that brand is is helping remove friction. Christian Klepp  45:43 That’s absolutely right. Well, Chantelle, we could have gone on for another 10 hours, but like you know, in the interest of time, I’d like to thank you for coming on, and thank you for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. So please quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you. Chantelle Little  45:59 Sure. Thanks Christian for having me. I appreciate it. So I’m Chantelle Little, founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency that serves B2B SaaS companies, and we help B2B SaaS teams clarify positioning, build differentiated brands, and also create websites and campaigns that drive qualified pipeline and ultimately revenue. That’s the key. So, so that’s that’s that in terms of connecting with me, you can check out our agency at tillerdigital.com that’s T, I, L, L, E R digital.com and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Christian Klepp  46:35 Perfect and we will drop the links to those all in the show notes when this episode comes out so once again. Chantelle, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Chantelle Little  46:45 Thanks, Christian, see ya. Christian Klepp  46:47 Thank you. Bye for now.

In this episode of the Revenue Leaders Podcast, we break down how to build a client acquisition system that helps businesses generate predictable revenue and consistently win new clients.Many companies struggle with sales not because their product is weak, but because they lack a structured client acquisition strategy. Without a clear system, teams rely on guesswork instead of a repeatable process for attracting and converting the right customers.In this episode, we discuss:• Why most businesses struggle with client acquisition• How defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) changes your sales outcomes• The key components of a client acquisition system• How to align your sales process with the buyer journey• Why trying to sell to everyone damages your pipeline• How to build a sales system that creates predictable growthThis episode kicks off our 6-part Client Acquisition Series, where we break down the frameworks sales leaders and founders can use to design a scalable client acquisition engine.If you're a founder, sales leader, or revenue operator looking to get more clients consistently, this episode will help you rethink how your sales system should work.Subscribe to the Revenue Leaders Podcast for more insights on B2B sales strategy, revenue leadership, and building predictable growth systems.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

This week Joseph Graham sits down with Rocky Pedden and talks about AI, Marketing and thriving in business in the new AI age This episode brings together two worlds that rarely get discussed with this much honesty: the real story behind modern B2B marketing and the human side of building a company that actually drives revenue—not vanity metrics. Joe sits down with Rocky Pedden, CEO of RevenueZen, to unpack how today's fastest‑growing companies are using SEO, GEO, and AI‑powered content to create predictable sales opportunities.Rocky has spent years working with founders, CMOs, private‑equity‑backed companies, and marketing teams who are tired of fluff and ready for systems that work. He's known for breaking down complex ideas—AI, search strategy, and modern buyer behavior—into simple, practical insights that leaders can use immediately.He also runs a private group for CMOs focused on using AI in marketing, where he helps senior leaders understand what's changing, what's hype, and what actually moves the needle.This conversation goes far beyond tactics. Rocky opens up about the lessons learned while growing RevenueZen, the challenges of client expectations, and the mindset shifts required to build a marketing engine that consistently produces revenue.Rocky Pedden | LinkedIn

Sales is full of advice — but most teams only learn the real lessons the hard way.In this special episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down 5 brutal sales lessons most teams learn too late — from cold calling myths to sales conversations, proposals, and building systems that actually win clients.You'll hear practical insights on:• Why cold calling isn't actually dead• How organizations start winning more clients consistently• Why most sales conversations fail before they begin• How teams leave money on the table after winning an account• What separates average proposals from winning dealsIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will challenge common sales assumptions and help you build a more effective sales process.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In this episode of the FINITE Podcast, Jodi sits down with the brilliant Dario Debarbieri, CMO at HCL Software. With a career at the intersection of marketing and AI, Dario offers a candid look at the Intelligence Economy and what it means for the modern B2B marketer.We explore a world where artificial intelligence interacts with audiences in real-time, reading the sentiment of minute digital movements to deliver personalized content in exactly the right context. Dario explains why the traditional 4 Ps of strategy may now matter less than your data quality, and why marketers must evolve from artists into engineers to survive.Key topics covered in this episode include:The Intelligence Economy: Why data is the new oil and how to use the right tools to extract and refine it.Marketers as Engineers: How the role of the marketer is shifting toward technical precision and data science.Context is King: Moving beyond simple demographics to understand the situational context of your buyer.The Ethics of AI: Navigating the fine line between helpful personalization and creepy intrusion (e.g., following a customer to their Alexa at bedtime).Listen to the full episode to hear how hyper-personalization is setting companies apart and how you can prepare for a future where AI is the norm.

Many business owners and podcasters feel invisible on Google, struggling to climb the search rankings while their competitors seem to dominate the first page. The SEO game often feels like a slow, technical uphill battle that takes months to show results. In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, Alesia sits down with Nick Jain, co-founder of Eagle Rock CFO, to discuss how he used a strategic podcast guesting campaign to 50x his website traffic in just six weeks. They chat about how to secure high-quality SEO backlinks, craft pitches that hosts can't ignore, and transform a single guest appearance into a long-term business asset. This week, episode 266 of Podcasting Unlocked is about podcast guesting for B2B growth! Nick Jain is the co-founder of Eagle Rock CFO Services, helping small businesses get elite financial advice without the Fortune 500 price tag. He graduated top of his class from Harvard Business School, spent a decade as a professional investor, and has scaled three businesses to over $100M across trucking, software, and eCommerce. He now works with companies doing $5-50M to help them run leaner and grow smarter.In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, Nick Jain is sharing the importance of having clear podcast goals and actionable steps you can take right now to plan your podcasting strategy for significant growth. Nick and I also chat about the following: The Power of the Backlink: Discover how being a guest on relevant shows creates high-authority SEO backlinks that signal to Google that your website is a trusted resource, leading to a massive spike in organic search traffic.Crafting the Perfect Pitch: Learn the essential elements of a successful podcast pitch. Move away from generic templates and start focusing on the unique value and case study results you can provide to a specific audience.Strategic Repurposing: Don't let your interview end when the recording stops. Use media packages, social media promotion, and email outreach to ensure your appearance continues to drive leads and engagement for months.Case Studies as Conversion Tools: Use specific, data-driven stories during your interviews to build audience trust. When you share real-world results rather than just theory, you move listeners from passive hearers to active leads.AI as a Financial Advisor: Explore how new technology is emulating the behavioral patterns of a great CFO, providing founders with the expert advice they need to scale without the high overhead of a full-time executive.Be sure to tune in to all the episodes to receive tons of practical tips on turning your podcast listeners into leads and to hear even more about the points outlined above. Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me! And don't forget to follow, rate and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!Learn more about Podcasting Unlocked at https://galatimedia.com/podcasting-unlocked/ CONNECT WITH NICK JAIN:Eagle Rock CFOLinkedInCONNECT WITH ALESIA GALATI:InstagramLinkedInWork with Galati Media! Work with Alesia 1:1Free Download: 15 Ways to Improve Your Podcast Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

By the time you submit a proposal, you've already invested significant time and resources.So why do so many proposals still fail?In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down what makes a winning proposal — from clearly articulating the problem statement to mapping current state, future state, and enabling buyers to move forward confidently.You'll learn:Why proposals often stall at the final stageHow to structure a proposal that winsThe importance of personalizationHow to reduce friction in the buying processWhy buyer enablement increases win ratesIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, professional services, or revenue leadership, this episode will help you close more deals with better proposals.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Most sales meetings don't turn into real opportunities.They stay surface-level.In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down how to turn conversations into deals by structuring discussions properly and creating qualified opportunities instead of casual meetings.You'll learn:Why most sales meetings go nowhereHow to create qualified opportunitiesHow to move from conversation to commitmentThe structure behind effective sales discussionsIf you're in B2B sales or revenue leadership and wan⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠⁠

From Stanford and the RAND Corporation to leading revenue teams in the commercial world, Brent Keltner, PhD, has spent his career decoding how complex B2B deals are actually closed. As founder and president of Winalytics, Brent helps mid-market and enterprise teams move beyond product pitching to true account-based growth. He's the author of “The Revenue Acceleration Playbook” and the forthcoming “Journey First Marketing,” a book that challenges one of B2B's biggest bad habits: obsessing over individual personas when companies actually buy in committees. In this episode, Brent reveals why traditional contact-focused marketing leaves so much revenue on the table and how to flip your entire go-to-market motion around a simple idea: accounts buy, personas don't. You'll hear how to design websites that speak to every member of the buying committee, why customer stories should be your #1 content asset (not #5), and how to connect product value, business value, and corporate value so that users, budget owners, and risk-averse stakeholders all see themselves in your message. https://youtu.be/2dCBKj9vf88 Brent also breaks down a practical roadmap for teams stuck in contact scoring and lead chaos. He explains how to use tools like ChatGPT on top of your CRM to spot real buying committees (not just random clickers or competitors snooping), how to build three aligned content streams for your core buyer types, and how to reuse a single customer story across your entire funnel, website, social, sales decks, and beyond. Whether you're a CMO, CRO, founder, or product marketer, you'll come away with a clearer picture of what true account-based enablement looks like in the real world and how a few smart changes can unlock faster, more predictable growth. Quotes: "Accounts buy. Personas don't, and every part of your marketing should reflect that reality.” “If your customers aren't saying it consistently, it isn't true, no matter how often your CEO repeats it.” “Customer stories are the only asset that turn ‘me selling to you' into ‘we solving a problem together.'” Resources: Winalytics LLC Brent Keltner on LinkedIn The Revenue Acceleration Playbook: Creating an Authentic Buyer Journey Across Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success on Amazon

#329 | Dave is joined by Emma Robinson, Head of B2B Marketing at Canva, and Kristine Segrist, Global Head of Consumer Marketing at Canva, to break down how Canva is scaling growth across both enterprise and consumer audiences. They talk about how Canva balances brand-building with pipeline accountability, how they turn bottom-up product adoption into enterprise deals, and why brand investment is a long-term growth lever. Emma and Kristine also share how their team structure, data science investments, and creative bets like the Love Your Work campaign help Canva scale without losing the brand identity that made them famous.Timestamps(00:00) - – Intro (03:21) - – Canva's marketing org structure (06:21) - – Blurring B2B and B2C (11:21) - – How Canva measures marketing impact (16:21) - – Turning free users into enterprise deals (21:21) - – Data science's role in marketing (24:21) - – Balancing brand bets with ROI (30:59) - – Inside the “Love Your Work” campaign (37:59) - – How Canva executes large campaigns (41:59) - – Building enterprise credibility and trust (44:59) - – FedEx case study on brand governance (48:59) - – Lessons from Google and Meta (52:59) - – Why creativity is a marketing superpower (54:59) - – Closing thoughts Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Knak - A no-code, campaign creation platform that lets you go from idea to on-brand email and landing pages in minutes, using AI where it actually matters. Learn more at knak.com/exitfive.Optimizely - An AI platform where autonomous agents execute marketing work across webpages, email, SEO, and campaigns. Get a free, personalized 45-minute AI workshop to help you identify the best AI use cases for your marketing team and map out where agents can save you time at optimizely.com/exitfive (PS - you'll get a FREE pair of Meta Ray Bans if you do). Customer.io - An AI powered customer engagement platform that help marketers turn first-party data into engaging customer experiences across email, SMS, and push. Learn more at customer.io/exitfive.  ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more

Winning new customers is exciting.But real revenue growth often comes from expanding the accounts you already have.In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down how to stop leaving money on the table by using a land and expand strategy to grow revenue from existing customers.You'll learn:How to think about account expansionWhy retention and expansion outperform constant prospectingHow to build a simple account planWhat revenue leaders get wrong about growthIf you work in B2B sales, SaaS, account management, or revenue leadership, this episode is for you.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠

Most companies don't fail to win clients because of their product.They fail because they don't have a system.In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down how organizations win more clients by building a clear, repeatable sales and go-to-market process.You'll learn:Why reactive selling kills client acquisitionHow a simple sales system improves consistencyWhat winning more clients actually looks likeHow to guide buyers from conversation to decisionWhy process beats tactics in B2B salesIf you're in B2B sales, professional services, or leading revenue growth, this episode is for you.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠⁠

In this episode, Ernesto speaks with Alisa Watlington, Senior Marketing Communications Specialist at CBC America. Alisa shares how CBC America, through its brands GANS Security Solutions and Computar Optics, delivers cutting-edge security and optics solutions to industries like retail, education, healthcare, and transportation. She discusses the challenges of reaching B2B clients in a traditional industry, the role of AI and SEO in their revamped websites, and their focus on large trade shows for client acquisition. Tune in to learn about the strategies CBC America uses to drive B2B growth and enhance customer engagement in the security and optics sectors.

Most revenue leaders chase numbers they can't actually control.The best ones build systems that compound.In this episode of Revenue Leaders, we break down why revenue is a lagging indicator — and how partnerships and ecosystems are becoming the most reliable way to drive predictable B2B growth.Our guest, Brian Williams, shares real-world lessons from building and scaling partner ecosystems, including what worked, what failed, and why most companies misunderstand partnerships completely.You'll learn:Why you can't control revenue — and what you can control insteadHow partner ecosystems drive pipeline, retention, and larger dealsWhy partnerships fail when treated like a short-term sales channelHow revenue leaders should think about 12–18 month growth strategiesHow founders, CROs, and sales leaders can build a partner-led GTM motionThis episode is for founders, CROs, revenue leaders, sales managers, and RevOps teams who want to stop chasing short-term wins and start building durable, scalable growth engines.If you sell complex or B2B deals, manage sales teams, or lead go-to-market strategy, this episode is for you.⭐ Unlock free resources (templates, frameworks & prompts):⁠https://coachpilot.beehiiv.com/⁠Join the community & access 157+ templates, frameworks and mega AI prompts used by top revenue teams.Watch Full Episode on YouTube:⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@revenueleaders⁠⁠Follow us:⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/davidfastuca/⁠

Melih Oztalay is the CEO of Smart Finds Marketing, an accomplished digital agency leader with over 38 years of experience in the marketing industry. Renowned for blending traditional and digital strategies, Melih has successfully guided clients through economic downturns, market disruptions, and the accelerating pace of technological change. As the architect of the "Four A's" philosophy (Anticipate, Accept, Adapt, Adopt), he empowers businesses to stay competitive and proactive in the age of AI, navigating uncertainty with logic and resilience. In this episode of Marketer of the Day, Melih Oztalay sits down with Robert Plank to discuss surviving and thriving through seismic industry changes, such as the 2009 financial crisis and the COVID pandemic. Melih shares how the art of “pivoting” underpins long-term success and how digital transformation is more than following trends; it's about measurable, strategic action. He details the evolution from SEO to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), why businesses must transition from pursuing rankings to being referenced by AI, and how schema/JSON scripts can elevate AI's visibility. Listeners will gain actionable strategies for embracing change, breaking through emotional resistance, and leveraging both human teams and AI to solve core business challenges. Quotes: “Marketing isn't about promotion; it's a discipline of problem-solving. The brands that win are the ones that solve real problems faster and better.” “When change is inevitable, emotion is optional. Anticipate it, accept it, adapt fast, and adopt smarter—that's how you stay ahead.” “In an AI-driven world, rankings matter less than relevance. The future belongs to those who are referenced, not just found.” Resources: Connect with Melih Oztalay on LinkedIn Learn about Meliho Z Talay on BrandYourself. Visit Smart Finds Marketing

What does brain science really teach us about LinkedIn marketing for B2B marketers?In this episode of Social Media for B2B Growth, LinkedIn expert Michelle J Raymond is joined by marketing behavioural science specialist Nancy Harhut to break down how emotion, relevance, repetition, and buyer psychology shape decision-making on LinkedIn.You'll learn why B2B buyers are never purely rational, why niche LinkedIn content outperforms broad thought leadership, and how to create LinkedIn marketing that drives trust, engagement, and sales — without sounding salesy.If you're a B2B marketer using LinkedIn as a growth channel, this episode will change how you plan, write, and prioritise your LinkedIn content.Key moments in this episode - 00:00 LinkedIn Marketing Myths in B2B02:50 Emotion and Decision-Making in LinkedIn Marketing05:45 Fear, FOMO, and Loss Aversion on LinkedIn08:20 Repetition and Trust in LinkedIn Marketing11:35 LinkedIn's Shift from Reach to Relevance14:50 Niche LinkedIn Marketing for B2B Growth18:15 Reducing Friction in LinkedIn Marketing Content22:25 Why Your Product Shouldn't Be the Hero on LinkedIn25:45 One LinkedIn Marketing Change B2B Marketers Should Make29:10 The Future of LinkedIn Marketing for B2B BrandsCONNECT WITH MICHELLE J RAYMONDMichelle J Raymond on LinkedInBook a free intro callhttps://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/B2B Growth Co newsletterToday's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. https://metricool.com/michellejraymond/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=20251216_michelle-raymond_dec-premium_en&utm_content=audio&utm_term=q3

Welcome to a special New Years edition of the podcast! As we kick off a new year, we're revisiting one of our most timely and strategic LinkedIn Live conversations! This discussion with Paul Jones, Moderator of the Connect To Market Community & Founder of Bridgio, explores why podcasts are becoming a critical pillar of B2B go-to-market strategies heading into 2026 and beyond.This episode is a powerful reminder that podcasts aren't just another content channel. They're a relationship-building engine, one rooted in generosity, trust, and long-term value. With markets getting noisier, buyers more resistant, and AI flooding feeds with sameness, this conversation reframes podcasts as a “give-first” GTM lever that helps brands stand out by actually connecting.In this episode, we delve into:Podcasts as a Strategic GTM Tool. Podcasts should be treated as a core go-to-market asset, not just content, and how they build trust, credibility, and real relationships in B2B.The most effective podcasts focus on giving value, attention, and platform to guests and audiences, lowering resistance and creating organic opportunities over time.A candid look at unclear goals, poor positioning, AI-driven noise, and why buyers are increasingly resistant to pushy, transactional marketing.Micro-Niches Over Mass Appeal. Serving a specific, well-defined audience beats trying to speak to everyone, and how micro-niche focus drives stronger engagement and results.Prioritizing the guest (then the listener, then the brand) leads to better conversations, stronger relationships, and more downstream business impact.The importance of weekly consistency, integrating podcasts into your broader GTM strategy, and using AI to responsibly repurpose human-driven conversations.✨ As we move into 2026 and beyond, it's time to break old myths, drive real impact, and connect with people in ways that actually matter.

We often think of influencers as people with huge follower counts, but true influence happens at the micro-level, right where your customers and brand evangelists live. This is the realm of Personality-Led Growth, and it's where B2B marketing is headed, but we there's a lot of improvement needed beforehand. On this episode of FINITE, we're joined by Andy Lambert, the entrepreneur who scaled ContentCal to 30,000 users before selling the business to Adobe.Andy has a rare perspective, having seen influencer marketing from both the scrappy startup trenches and the massive enterprise scale:Andy shares the costly mistake of misaligned paid media and how ContentCal pivoted to building genuine advocacy through Community-Led Growth and activating micro-evangelists. He explains how this approach doubled pipeline velocity and average sales price.Now leading product at Adobe Express, Andy reveals how he tackles B2B influencer marketing at scale, moving past simple reach to buying creativity and deep integration. He breaks down their strategic partnerships with macro-influencers like Steven Bartlett to drive unaided brand awareness and embed the product directly into a creator's workflow.If you're looking for practical advice on how to structure, manage, and measure your B2B influencer initiatives—shifting your focus from merely buying an audience to cultivating genuine advocacy and authority—this episode is a must-listen.

Marc Klingen, Gründer von Langfuse, spricht über die verschiedenen Wachstumskanäle im B2B-Dev-Tools-Bereich. Er teilt, warum Reddit für Nischenprobleme besser als klassisches Marketing ist, wie sie durch Partnerschaften mit größeren Unternehmen Reichweite aufbauen und warum Content-Marketing langfristig durch Domain-Autorität belohnt wird. Was du lernst: Wie du die richtigen Wachstumskanäle findest Die Balance zwischen Direct Sales und Bottom-up Warum Partnerschaften Vertrauen schaffen Den richtigen Mix aus Kanälen finden ALLES ZU UNICORN BAKERY: https://stan.store/fabiantausch  Mehr zu Marc: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcklingen  Website: https://langfuse.com/  Mehr zu Co-Host Mike: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemahlkow/  Website: https://fastgen.com/  Join our Founder Tactics Newsletter: 2x die Woche bekommst du die Taktiken der besten Gründer der Welt direkt ins Postfach: https://www.tactics.unicornbakery.de/

Content strategy success hinges on three measurable outcomes. Benji Block, founder of Signature Series and former Executive Producer of B2B Growth podcast, breaks down the metrics that matter for B2B brands. He outlines a framework measuring click-through rates on thumbnails and titles, average view duration for consumption quality, and downstream engagement including comments, website visits, and real-world conversations that drive business results.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Content strategy success hinges on three measurable outcomes. Benji Block, founder of Signature Series and former Executive Producer of B2B Growth podcast, breaks down the metrics that matter for B2B brands. He outlines a framework measuring click-through rates on thumbnails and titles, average view duration for consumption quality, and downstream engagement including comments, website visits, and real-world conversations that drive business results.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B content creators struggle to measure real impact beyond vanity metrics. Benji Block, founder of Signature Series and former host of B2B Growth podcast, shares his framework for evaluating content performance. He recommends tracking meaningful comments that spark conversations, monitoring average view duration to gauge content quality, and optimizing click-through rates through systematic thumbnail testing. The discussion covers how engagement metrics connect to business outcomes and the importance of measuring downstream effects like website visits and real-world conversations.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

B2B content creators struggle to measure real impact beyond vanity metrics. Benji Block, founder of Signature Series and former host of B2B Growth podcast, shares his framework for evaluating content performance. He recommends tracking meaningful comments that spark conversations, monitoring average view duration to gauge content quality, and optimizing click-through rates through systematic thumbnail testing. The discussion covers how engagement metrics connect to business outcomes and the importance of measuring downstream effects like website visits and real-world conversations.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Al Kushner is the visionary founder of LinkedVantage.com, a firm dedicated to transforming LinkedIn profiles into high-performing assets for B2B growth. With decades of experience, Al has mastered the art of turning digital presence into measurable business opportunities through strategic positioning and impactful connections. Tune in as he shares actionable insights on profile optimization, content strategy, and building meaningful professional networks that convert.Please learn more about Al Kushner at www.LinkedVantage.comIn this special anniversary episode of Mr. Biz Radio, host Ken “Mr. Biz” Wentworth marks nearly nine years on air by exploring LinkedIn's remarkable comeback as a premier platform for business growth. He is joined by LinkedIn strategist and LinkedVantage.com founder, Al Kushner, who shares his entrepreneurial journey and expertise in transforming LinkedIn profiles into profit-generating assets. Together, they uncover how the platform's evolution continues to empower professionals to build credibility, nurture meaningful connections, and drive high-ROI results.The conversation is packed with actionable insights for entrepreneurs and executives looking to elevate their digital presence. Al underscores the importance of polished visuals, credible endorsements, and authentic engagement as key elements of a winning LinkedIn strategy. From avoiding the notorious “pitch slap” to mastering educational content and group interaction, this episode delivers a blueprint for leveraging LinkedIn as a modern engine of influence and opportunity.Key Takeaways:-Professional headshots, updated backgrounds, and strong third-party endorsements are crucial for making a compelling first impression.-Personalize approach rather than overwhelming new connections with immediate sales pitches, which often deter genuine engagement.-Utilize short, educational videos and engage actively in LinkedIn groups to enhance visibility and connect with key audiences.-Acts as a powerful tool for entrepreneurs, enabling targeted connections by showing active users and recent promotions within LinkedIn.-Videos between 30 and 90 seconds are particularly favored by LinkedIn's algorithm, promoting more substantial engagement over traditional text posts.

Megan Bowen, CEO of Refine Labs, shares the core fundamentals behind modern B2B growth. She explains how buyer behavior has shifted, how marketing must evolve, and what it takes to build a profitable, scalable go-to-market engine rooted in focus, data, and customer understanding.Topics CoveredEvolution of B2B buying: analog → website → dark social → AI era.Aligning go-to-market around buyer behavior.Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) definition and validation.Strategic narrative development using Andy Raskin's framework.The “Brand, Demand, Expand” model for growth.Simplifying measurement: attribution, share of search, and split-the-funnel analysis.Sales and marketing alignment through shared goals and accountability.Building efficient, profitable revenue systems.Questions This Video Helps AnswerHow has B2B buying behavior evolved and what does it mean for marketers?What are the most important elements of a modern go-to-market strategy?How can you define and operationalize an ideal customer profile?What is a strategic narrative and how does it drive company alignment?How should marketing and sales collaborate to achieve efficient growth?What metrics actually matter when measuring pipeline performance?Jobs, Roles, and Responsibilities MentionedCEO, CMO, VP of Sales, RevOps Lead, Account Manager, Customer Success Manager, Marketing Manager, BDR/SDR, Product Manager, Private Equity Partner, Founder.Key TakeawaysFocus beats complexity: simplify your go-to-market strategy around what works.The best companies deeply understand buyer behavior shifts and adapt early.A validated, data-driven ICP ensures efficiency and profitable growth.A strong strategic narrative, backed by leadership, drives internal and external alignment.Growth requires balanced investment in brand, demand, and expansion.Align marketing, sales, and finance goals to create predictable, sustainable performance.Measurement should prioritize insight and decision-making over vanity metrics.

In this episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross was invited by Craig Hewitt of Rogue Startups Podcast to explore how AI is transforming B2B marketing, sales operations, and digital strategy. They cover the decline of traditional SEO, the rise of Reddit as a powerful discovery platform, the evolving importance of LinkedIn and YouTube, and practical advice on AI tools, personalization, and productivity. This is a must-listen for marketers, SaaS founders, and anyone looking to future-proof their growth strategies in an AI-driven world. Key Takeaways and Insights: 1. What's working now?” in B2B and SaaS marketing - Personal brand content from team members on social media.  - Micro-influencers and content creators paid on performance for lead-generating videos.  2. Create “ridiculously valuable” and original content - insightful data or perspectives that AI can't replicate. - AI makes distribution and repurposing easier, but not idea generation or storytelling. - Personalization tools like Loom or LinkedIn voice messages still work well, but are hard to scale. 3. Content Repurposing & Platform Strategy - Repurposing content—doing it well beyond basic automation tools. - LinkedIn → best for B2B buyers and thought leadership. - Twitter/X → still relevant for technical audiences and startup visibility.  - Instagram → underutilized channel with potential.  - YouTube → huge upside for discoverability + long-form value, but tough to execute well. 4. SEO in Decline? - AI has definitely reduced Google traffic—marketers must embrace multi-channel discovery. - YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and social as the new search engines. 5. Bonus Frameworks: - “Ross's Hierarchy of Needs”: Revenue > Traffic > Channels. - “Distribution Framework”: Audience Attention vs Competitive Saturation = Channel Opportunity. Underhyped vs Overhyped AI Trends - Underhyped: Reddit - Massive influence in buyer decisions. - Google indexing Reddit heavily due to user trust. - Overhyped: Quora - Once valuable, now polluted and ineffective. Resources & Tools:

Marketers are spending more time learning the latest martech tools than understanding their customers, and it's costing them results. In this episode, Michelle J Raymond challenges the obsession with tools and brings the focus back to what really drives growth on LinkedIn: customers.Discover why martech is only as good as the strategy behind it, how to spot when you've fallen into the “shiny tools trap,” and practical ways to shift your time and energy back to researching, listening to, and connecting with your buyers.If you want to stop burning money on tools and start building trust, this episode will show you how to put customers first — and let martech amplify your efforts, not replace themKey moments in this episode - 00:00 The MarTech Distraction00:47 Reflecting on LinkedIn Strategies04:28 The MarTech Trap08:39 Customer-Centric Approach13:37 Practical Steps to Refocus on Customers18:58 Building a Strong LinkedIn StrategyCONNECT WITH MICHELLE J RAYMOND Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn Book a free intro call https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/ B2B Growth Co newsletterToday's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. https://metricool.com/michellejraymond/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=20251021_michelle-raymond_oct-reporting-li_en&utm_content=audio&utm_term=q3

#277 Growth | Dave is joined by Emma Robinson, Head of B2B Marketing at Canva, and Kristine Segrist, VP of Consumer Marketing at Canva. Together, Emma and Kristine lead the teams driving Canva's growth across both enterprise and consumer audiences, helping the company scale into a platform now used by over 95% of the Fortune 500.Dave, Emma, and Kristine cover:How Canva balances brand-building with pipeline accountability, and why they view brand investment as long-term growth.The playbook Canva uses to turn bottom-up adoption into enterprise deals, including how product signals guide upsell and expansion.How their team structure, data science investments, and creative bets (like the Love Your Work campaign) work together to scale B2B marketing without losing Canva's approachable brand identity.This episode offers a practical look at how one of the world's most recognizable platforms approaches B2B growth.Timestamps(00:00) - – Intro (03:48) - – Canva's marketing org structure (06:48) - – Blurring B2B and B2C (11:48) - – How Canva measures marketing impact (16:48) - – Turning free users into enterprise deals (21:48) - – Data science's role in marketing (24:48) - – Balancing brand bets with ROI (31:23) - – Inside the “Love Your Work” campaign (38:23) - – How Canva executes large campaigns (42:23) - – Building enterprise credibility and trust (45:23) - – FedEx case study on brand governance (49:23) - – Lessons from Google and Meta (53:23) - – Why creativity is a marketing superpower (55:23) - – Closing thoughts Send guest pitches and ideas to hi@exitfive.comJoin the Exit Five Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterCheck out the Exit Five job board: https://jobs.exitfive.com/Become an Exit Five member: https://community.exitfive.com/checkout/exit-five-membership***Today's episode is brought to you by Walnut.Why are we pouring all this effort into marketing just to push buyers to a “request a demo” or “contact sales” button?Come on, today's buyers don't want to talk to sales right away. They want to explore your product themselves, see how it works, and understand its value before booking a meeting.That's where Walnut comes in.Walnut empowers marketers and GTM teams to create interactive, self-guided product experiences in minutes. Embed these experiences on your site, in emails, or anywhere in your funnel to let buyers engage on their terms, from awareness to close and beyond. That's the beauty of Walnut - you're getting a platform that your sales and CS colleagues can use to showcase the product too.And the best part? You get real intent data—see which features prospects love, where they drop off, and what's actually driving pipeline. Demo Qualified Leads are the new MQL.Over 500 companies, like Adobe and NetApp, use Walnut to drive 2-3x higher website conversion rates and 7 figures in pipeline on a yearly basis. So do you want to drive more leads, shorten sales cycles, and actually show your product instead of hiding it behind another typical B2B CTA? Go check out Walnut.io. And if you tell them Dave from Exit 5 sent you, they'll build out your first demo for free!

Jay Schwedelson gets the truth about LinkedIn company pages from Michelle J. Raymond—and it's not what you'd expect. Turns out those dusty, forgotten pages could be your brand's biggest missed opportunity. They dig into what's actually working now, why impressions are dropping for everyone, and how you can build a company presence that doesn't feel like a corporate ghost town. Plus, Michelle reveals what happened when she stopped posting for two weeks straight.ㅤSubscribe to Michelle's newsletter: https://b2bgrowthco.com/newsletter/Check out her podcast, Social Media for B2B Growth: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-for-b2b-growth-linkedin-strategies-and-tips/id1603908569Follow Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond/ㅤBest Moments:(01:09) Michelle's accidental journey from B2B sales to LinkedIn company page expert(03:15) Why she doubled down on company pages when everyone else ignored them(04:44) The quick page audit you should do today(06:20) What kinds of content actually work on company pages (and what to avoid)(09:00) Why follower count matters—just not the way you think(10:56) Yes, your page looking dead is sending a message(14:00) Michelle's two-week LinkedIn break—what happened and why she did it(19:00) The algorithm actually wants you to come back(20:15) What platform Michelle would bet on if LinkedIn disappeared tomorrowㅤCheck out our 100% FREE + VIRTUAL EVENTS! ->Guru Conference - The World's Largest Virtual EMAIL MARKETING Conference - Nov 6-7!Register here: www.GuruConference.comㅤCheck out Jay's YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelsonCheck out Jay's TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@schwedelsonCheck Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/ㅤMASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!Email chaos across campuses, branches, or chapters? Emma by Marigold lets HQ keep control while local teams send on-brand, on-time messages with ease.Podcast & GURU listeners: 50 % off your first 3 months with an annual plan (new customers, 10 k-contact minimum, terms apply).Claim your offer now at jayschwedelson.com/emma