But most still miss the point. If you're not walking away with real relationships and revenue potential, you're doing it wrong.

Hey there, I'm Kerry Curran—B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.

In this episode, Pipeline in Person: How Relationship-First Events Drive Real ROI, we’re diving into how the smartest B2B brands are getting off the expo floor and into curated conversations that actually convert.

I'm joined by Jon Whitfield, Chief Operating Officer at MediaPost, who has spent over 20 years perfecting the art of high-impact, face-to-face marketing. Jon isn’t just running another event company—he’s building a reputation for delivering summit experiences that sponsors rebook year after year because they drive pipeline, not just visibility.

And here’s the surprising truth: smaller, niche gatherings with the right ratio of buyers to sponsors consistently outperform massive trade shows—if you get the format right. Jon breaks down why most conferences fail to deliver ROI—and how to fix it.

We cover:

• The one customer value metric sponsors should use to justify their spend
  
   
• How curated experiences like golf, axe throwing, and roundtables deepen buyer trust
  
   
• What brand-side marketers actually want from events in a post-remote world
  
   
• And how to build stronger sponsor-attendee matchmaking and content alignment
  
   

Picture this: instead of awkward badge scans, you're having real conversations over dinner, sharing challenges in closed-door roundtables, and walking away with warm leads who already know, like, and trust you.

Stay to the end, where Jon shares his one non-negotiable rule for evaluating event ROI—and how to spot a conference worth investing in before you spend a dollar.

If you're investing in events this year, this episode is your edge.

Hit follow, drop a rating, and share it with your field marketing or partnerships lead—because pipeline starts before the pitch.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.296):
So welcome, Jon. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Jon Whitfield (00:07.832):
Well, hello, Kerry. Thanks for having me on. My name is Jon Whitfield. I'm the Chief Operating Officer over at MediaPost. I've been there for a long time—I didn’t realize you could be at a place for as long as 22 years. Apparently, there are other places you can work. I didn’t know that. No one ever told me. I just learned that you can get other jobs at other places.

Yeah, I’ve been at MediaPost for 22 years. I’ve seen a lot of things change over the years, and yeah, we’re thrilled just to still be kicking and doing our thing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:46.176):
Excellent. Well, I know you've become the expert at events, and in my own experience with MediaPost, you’ve curated a really valuable experience for both brands, attendees, and sponsors. I want to dive into your expertise and help marketers and sponsors get more out of their conferences—and really think about what that investment looks like.

We’re seeing more and more value put into face-to-face relationship-building and brand-building. Conferences offer that, right? Talk about how you've seen the industry evolve and what you're seeing today.

Jon Whitfield (01:38.716):
Yeah, I mean, it's funny. When I first started out in this business, you had real tentpole events—like the ad:techs and the SESs of the world—that had 300 exhibitors and thousands of attendees. These were real, large gatherings that happened several times a year. If you weren’t at those—whether as an exhibitor or an attendee—you kind of didn’t exist. It was like, “We’ve got to be there.”

So in the early 2000s and through the first decade of the new millennium, those large shows were really commonplace and important.

We participated not only as exhibitors but also by launching our own conference series called OMMA Global, which had a couple of thousand people, 150 exhibitors, and was a two-day, multi-track content event. It was a big lift. It wasn’t easy to put together or manage.

But after five or six years of doing that, we realized it was really difficult to go back to our sponsor pool and guarantee them the ROI they were looking for. Because with large events, you're not really in control of the experience. You're kind of leaving it to chance: maybe someone good stops by a booth, maybe there's a follow-up, maybe someone connects at the cocktail party, maybe someone attends the sponsored presentation.

Sometimes you get four people in the room, sometimes 50—you’re just not in control. Over time, we learned that the more control you have over the experience—and the more you're involved in it—the more satisfied everyone will be: sponsors, attendees, everyone.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:28.800):
Right.

Jon Whitfield (04:15.984):
Exactly. And so, we just evolved. You’ve still got the big tentpole events like CES that serve a purpose. But I don’t know many people in advertising or marketing who come back from CES saying, “I got a ton of business from that.”

You want to be seen there, like at Cannes. These large shows are viable, but as a business, we found we couldn’t deliver on the experience we promised. That’s why we transitioned to smaller settings, like our Summit Series.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:15.244):
Yeah, and I’ve been to a number of your events as well as the big shows. I agree—both as a sponsor and as an attendee—with the smaller, more niche, intimate events, relationship-building becomes much more organic. You’re on the bus to dinner, at happy hour, or even horseback riding. There’s so much more opportunity to build meaningful relationships.

Jon Whitfield (05:46.884):
Yeah, in a smaller setting, you really get to know people. It's almost like dating. They’re testing you out, seeing how you are in different environments, and you’re a direct reflection of the business you're there to represent.

When the event ends, they have a pretty good sense of, “Do I want to work with this person?” Or maybe, “That didn’t really work out.” You don’t get that level of intimacy when you're just scanning badges at a big conference. You’re not getting that.

So we value time spent in different environments—not just in a conference room, but also on the bus, during a golf round, throwing axes, horseback riding, whatever it is. You really see people’s true selves in those environments, and that translates into better business relationships. At least, that’s what we think.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:04.492):
Yeah, no—and again, I’ve loved it. I often describe your events as almost like destination weddings. By the end of three days, you’re best friends with everyone. You’ve cultivated a really unique culture within your events, where the sponsors all get to know each other, and everyone’s been so willing to have conversations and learn from each other.

Jon Whitfield (07:43.888):
Absolutely. It’s something we’ve tinkered with for years. It’s never perfect. Things happen—weather, logistics—that can muddy things up. But if you have the basic formula down and you’ve tried it enough times, you can predict, “This is going to be a good one.”

We’ve been doing our Email Summit for 19 years, twice a year. We’ve been doing our Performance Marketing Summit (formerly Search & Performance) for 19 years. These are tried-and-true programs.

And I always ask our sponsors: What’s a customer worth to you? What do we need to do to deliver not just one, but two, three, four customers? We want to knock it out of the park. If a customer is worth more than their investment, that’s great—I can deliver that. But if the customer value is low and the investment is high, that’s a math problem.

So we work backward from that. How do we get each supporter to a place of success? That’s how we approach it.

Jon Whitfield (09:11.312):

That’s great—because I can deliver that. But if they’re investing a ton and their customer value is very low, then there's a math problem, right? So it’s about figuring out how we get those individuals who support our events to a place of success. That’s how we approach it. We start kind of backward and move forward—and then do our best to deliver on the promise.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:35.087):

Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. And it's smart to think of it that way. Everyone needs ROI on their investments. So when you're talking to sponsors—say a new ad tech, martech, or agency reaches out and wants to sponsor—what are they usually looking for in a conference experience?

Jon Whitfield (09:58.756):

Well, it kind of depends on what the product is. Some of our sponsors have a more technical platform or need more time to explain their value—they might need a visual or demo. So they might want to sponsor a presentation where they get 10 minutes to show and educate everyone on who they are, what they do, and why they matter in the overall ecosystem.

Others don’t need that much time. They’re like, “Here’s what we do, here are a few of our customers, and we’d like to sponsor the brewery tour,” or “Let’s take everyone on a cool boat ride.” It’s more about creating a memorable experience and attaching your name to something we’ve built—where all boats rise. You mentioned competitors—at our events, sponsors often become frenemies. They all understand they’re there for the same reason. So we keep it positive. Let’s all try to win. There’s no reason to make it awkward.

So yeah, it really depends on what the sponsor is trying to achieve. We just recommend what we know works, based on years and years of doing these.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:28.674):

Yeah, and I like what you pointed out about branding and associating your brand with the audience. Especially in B2B, that’s such a challenge. So many brands I talk to are focused on lower funnel—"I just need the sales"—but they forget their audience has to have heard of them and liked them first. The conference environment is a really effective and efficient way to do that.

Jon Whitfield (11:59.534):

Exactly. You also asked me earlier about how things have evolved over time—and, of course, we had this little thing called COVID in between. We were doing fine leading into it, but coming out of COVID was rough. We couldn’t do in-person events, so we pivoted to virtual—Zoom events, video panels. They were fine for keeping the community connected, but nothing compares to in-person relationship-building.

In 2021, 2022, and 2023, I’d start each show by asking the audience, “Raise your hand if this is your first summit.” A lot of hands would go up. Then I’d ask, “Are you still primarily working remotely?” And again—almost everyone raised their hands.

And if I asked today, I’d still get a majority. So when we talk about the viability of events—how are you going to meet people if no one's in an office anymore? Are you going to go to their house? Meet at a local Starbucks? At some point, it lands back on events. And yeah, we’ve been fortunate to benefit from that shift.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:15.752):

Yeah.

Jon Whitfield (13:25.592):

I still think there’s this broad shift away from full-time, in-office work. And that really emphasizes the value of in-person gatherings—big or small.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:41.239):

I completely agree. And vendors can't do lunch-and-learns like they used to, either—not if the agency or brand team is fully remote or just more dispersed. So conferences become a valuable way to introduce your brand, tease interest, and build toward a deeper sales conversation or demo.

Now, we've talked about sponsors. But the other critical audience is the attendees. Your target audience is brand-side marketers across different industries and verticals. From their perspective, what are they looking for in a conference? What do they find at MediaPost?

Jon Whitfield (14:41.604):

When brands come together at our events, they’re looking for like-minded individuals going through similar challenges. You might have someone who runs email for American Airlines sitting next to someone managing email for a restaurant chain—and they’re facing the same problems.

It might be deliverability. It might be creative. It might be open rates. That’s just one example, but a lot of marketers want a platform where they can share ideas, collaborate, trade war stories, and ask questions—even what they think might be dumb questions—in a safe environment where they’ll get real help and honest answers.

So when they get back to the office on Monday, they’re equipped with real insights and action items. That’s the big thing.

The sponsors—the vendors and platforms—provide the tools. They’re the ones building solutions to help marketers do their jobs better.

I always say this at our conferences: MediaPost doesn’t really provide a takeaway in the traditional sense—no binders, no decks. The takeaway is the connection. It's the chance to meet tech solution providers who are working hard to make marketers' lives easier and more effective.

We create the space for those connections to happen—in an intimate way, where people can really spend time together, share ideas, riff off each other, and see where it goes.

I think that’s what our buyers—the marketers—really want. And here’s the thing: they get calls all the time from our sponsors before the event and they never answer the phone. They’re busy people. But then they come to the event and say, “Oh my god, you’ve been calling me for months. I never picked up. But I watched your presentation—it was amazing. Let’s set up a test next week.”

We hear that story over and over again. It’s not that marketers don’t want to learn about these technologies—it’s that their day-to-day is packed. So events give them the breathing room to explore.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:08.846):

Yeah, definitely. And to your point, it’s so important for marketers to stay on top of the latest technology, platforms, publishers. You give them an environment to learn from peers and providers. You also do a great job balancing content and networking. Talk a bit about your approach to content and the roundtables.

Jon Whitfield (17:56.014):

Yeah. All of our content is built for the marketer—the buyer, the brand-side attendee. Our panels, our keynotes, anything that’s not sponsored is programmed with that in mind.

We want to highlight best practices and challenges from the main stage so that people can identify with what’s being shared. That content sets the stage for deeper conversations later—whether it's during an activity, a reception, or dinner. It plants seeds that grow over three days.

These aren’t one-day fly-in events. You’re invested. You’re present. You’re there to grow. From a content perspective, we always ask the marketer or agency side: What are your struggles? What are your wins? What lessons can you share?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:53.730):

Yeah.

Jon Whitfield (19:23.664):

And then, when it’s a sponsor’s turn—okay, you’ve got 10 minutes—riff on what you heard. Build on it if you want. But mostly, tell us who you are, what you do, what value you offer. We want a pitch. Show us the dashboard. Show us who your customers are. Be clear.

That’s how we do it. We don’t cross-pollinate the content. You’ve spoken at our events—you know we keep it church and state. We program the editorial content. And we expect sponsors to bring equally valuable content that’s insightful and impactful.

That’s how we create a full, engaging morning of sessions.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:28.556):

Absolutely. And you do a great job curating senior-level speakers and timely themes that reflect what marketers in those verticals are really facing.

I’ve always found that valuable. And one of my favorite parts? Your roundtables. Like you always say—mics off, real talk. That’s when people ask the questions they’re afraid to ask on stage. And it’s just as valuable for the sponsors—they get to hear firsthand what their audience is struggling with and start a meaningful conversation right then and there.

Jon Whitfield (21:51.652):

Yep.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:56.417):

It’s all about building real, mutually beneficial relationships—and you’ve created a space that does that so well.

Jon Whitfield (22:05.208):

Thanks. And yeah—we’ve had feedback that if we could run an entire summit with just roundtables, people would love it. They’re so impactful. You turn off the cameras, and people get honest.

Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, but those roundtables consistently get top marks in our post-show surveys.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:41.484):

I believe it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:41.484):

I definitely agree. Jon, this has been incredibly helpful. I think it's important for everyone listening to be reminded just how valuable event investments can be—from education to relationship-building to, ultimately, driving sales.

So for those tuning in who want to ramp up their event strategy—or need to build a business case for budget from their CFO—what’s your recommendation for getting started?

Jon Whitfield (23:18.244):

Start by comparing the costs. What’s your total investment going to be to sponsor an event? It’s not inexpensive. There’s travel, hotels, time. If you’re a vendor or sponsor, it’s not the cheapest thing in the world.

So go back to that question: What’s a customer worth to you?

How are you currently getting customers? Are you converting through digital-only channels? Maybe you're just selling widgets and don’t need in-person interaction. Fine. But if you’re in a consultative or technical sale where FaceTime matters, then events are going to pay dividends.

If you're trying to decide which events to support, here’s what I tell people: Look at whether the sponsors from two or three years ago are still coming back. If they’re not, run for the hills. That’s a red flag. It means the experience didn’t deliver.

Look at our Email Insider Summit. We’ve been running it for 19 years. And for at least the past 10, you’ll see many of the same companies sponsoring over and over. That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes hard work. You have to care deeply about the experience and the investment people are making—your sponsors, your ticket buyers.

That’s something we believe in strongly. Maybe that’s why we’re still around. But yeah—do your homework. Know what a customer is worth to you. Run the numbers. You have to get ROI from these things. That’s just the bottom line.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:36.471):

I totally agree. And one thing to level-set with your CFO is: you're probably not going to see ROI immediately. Depending on what you're selling, it might be three to six months down the road.

If you come home without a signed contract, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success—it just means you’re playing a longer game.

And I know you also do a great job customizing sponsor opportunities at your events.

Jon Whitfield (26:18.788):

Yeah, it’s all about knowing who you are as a company. What do you want to be known for? Is it education? Is it fun? Is it gifts?

Every brand has its own playbook. That’s why we offer a variety of sponsorship options—because everyone has a different goal when they come to an event.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:59.630):

Exactly. There’s so much flexibility. One-on-one meetings. Content partnerships. Webinars. Lots of ways to extend the experience beyond the event.

And one more thing we didn’t touch on—brand attendees. You have some great senior-level VIP opportunities, right?

Jon Whitfield (27:21.668):

Absolutely. For this model to work, we need a strong brand-side presence—decision-makers, people with media and marketing budgets, people who want to network and learn.

That’s the lifeblood of our business. And we’re always looking to bring in new marketers doing interesting things.

That’s part of what keeps this exciting. Even something as “old” as email is constantly evolving. There are always new tools and trends—whether it’s AI, chatGPT, TikTok, or whatever else is coming.

So yeah, we need marketers who want to tell their stories, who want to improve, and who want to meet others doing the same.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:21.070):

And that’s how you pitch it to your boss. “Yes, I’m going to Amelia Island—but look who else will be there. Look at the brands and tech providers I’ll be learning from.” You come back with insights and a full notebook, and your higher-ups will be glad you went.

Jon Whitfield (29:47.044):

Exactly. And yes—senior marketers can qualify for our VIP passes. We have a set number of those for each event. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

We also cap the total audience to keep the buyer-to-seller ratio balanced—usually around 1:1. It’s typically 90–100 people: half brand-side, half sponsors. That way, everyone gets time to connect. And if by day three you haven’t met who you need to meet—you stayed in your room too long!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:48.834):

Well, I can say I’m still close with many of the marketers and vendors I’ve met at your events. I always recommend your summits because they’re high-value, well-structured, and genuinely productive.

So, Jon—if someone wants to get in touch to learn more, how can they find you?

Jon Whitfield (31:29.036):

Well, not that I need more email—but you can reach me at Jon@MediaPost.com. If you're interested in sponsorships, my right-hand man Seth Oilman is your guy—Seth@MediaPost.com. He’s our CRO and runs the sponsorship side.

Reach out, and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (31:54.624):

Excellent. We’ll include all of that in the show notes—and make sure everyone mentions they heard you here!

Jon Whitfield (32:02.552):

Thanks again, Kerry. You've been such a great supporter and advocate for years. We appreciate all you’ve done—and don’t stop!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (32:17.550):

Thanks, Jon. I believe in what you’re doing and love being part of it. Can’t wait to see you again soon!

Jon Whitfield (32:30.884):

You got it. Can’t wait.

Thanks again to Jon Whitfield for pulling back the curtain on what makes events actually drive results. Here’s what we’re walking away with: big expos can generate visibility, but intimate events create trust and conversions. ROI starts with one question—what’s a customer worth to you? 

Events should be evaluated not just on cost, but on continuity, brand fit, and customer alignment.

If this sparked ideas for your event or sponsor strategy, share it with your team—and let us know what resonated. Don’t forget to subscribe, review, and follow Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. To learn more, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com and follow me, Kerry Curran, on LinkedIn.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pressure is mounting for go-to-market leaders. Budgets are shrinking. Shortlists are tightening. AI is changing the game before most teams can even catch up. And yet, CMOs are expected to lead with confidence, deliver revenue, and evolve strategy—without burning out.

If that sounds familiar, this episode is your blueprint for navigating the storm.

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, host Kerry Curran sits down with Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion, to unpack what the most resilient, high-performing marketing leaders are doing differently right now—and why peer collaboration is the competitive advantage most execs overlook.

✅ Why CMOs must stop trying to “do more with less” alone

✅ The 3 GTM capabilities every modern marketing leader must build:

   • Profitable, efficient growth

   • AI-augmented GTM execution

   • Executive resilience and personal transformation

✅ How cross-functional collaboration beats siloed expertise—every time

✅ What Pavilion’s GTM25 Summit is revealing about the next generation of go-to-market leadership

Stay to the end where Kathleen shares the #1 strategic muscle every CMO must build this year—and how to develop it before your next board meeting.

If you get value from this episode, hit follow, drop a rating, and share it with a marketing or sales leader who needs to hear it. Let’s scale smart.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran, B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.

In every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you’re serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of your competition.

In Your Brand in Real Life: Event Strategies for Lasting Brand and Revenue Impact, I sit down with Emily Olson, President and Executive Producer at Arrow Event Management. With over two decades of experience producing brand launches, executive summits, and global conferences, Emily breaks down exactly what it takes to turn a live event into a high-ROI marketing channel.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Emily shares how homegrown talent shows became one of the most surprising—and most effective—community-building tools in her event playbook.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.774)
So welcome, Emily. Please share your background and expertise.

Emily Olson (00:06.952)
Thanks, Kerry. I'm Emily Olson, President and Executive Producer at Arrow Event Management. I’ve been producing events for almost 25 years, and I think I’ve done just about everything at this point—conferences, galas, brand launches, roadshows. I’ve worked all over the U.S. and internationally, and I’m really excited to be here today to talk about events and brand strategy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:38.2)
Well, thank you, Emily. I'm very excited to have you on today. We first met when you were producing some events for my agency many years ago, and you definitely raised the bar when it came to delivering a polished and valuable experience for guests. I’m excited to dive in and hear your recommendations.

When you typically start speaking with someone who wants to do an event for their company, how do you begin ideating what it will look like or how they should approach it?

Emily Olson (01:19.016)
That’s a great question. We start by understanding the goal of the event. Why are they hosting it? Who are they trying to reach? How are they measuring success? What do they want their attendees to think, feel, and do? That’s always how we start the conversation. From there, my team puts together a strategy to help achieve those goals.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:51.406)
Mm-hmm. So talk about the typical audience for you and your events. How does that play into the event plan and strategy?

Emily Olson (02:27.794)
Many of our audiences are different—it almost feels like a unique audience for every single event. Sometimes it’s internal, sometimes B2B, sometimes B2C. I did a sports-related event this week targeting fans of women’s sports. The fan base changes for every event, so there really isn’t a template. For each one, we look at the goals and determine how to best reach that specific audience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:58.594)
Mm-hmm. Excellent. So what research do you and your team do to understand the audience and come up with ideas?

Emily Olson (03:13.084)
We look at who they are and what’s been done before. Maybe the organization has hosted this event before—what worked, what didn’t, what was a mess. In many cases, we put together different personas and walk through each one. Persona A might have one experience, Persona B another. We use that approach to figure out how best to reach each audience member or category.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:49.216)
That’s great. You’ve talked before about making events feel special for each attendee. Can you give examples of how your team creates unique, memorable experiences?

Emily Olson (04:13.948)
Yes—walking away with memories is key. What do you want them to think, feel, and do? Post-COVID, virtual events pushed us to engage people through every step. While we've moved away from most virtual experiences, attendees still expect engagement across all touchpoints. They want unique experiences. They want something they can post on Instagram—something they haven’t seen before. Everyone wants to be first. So, if we create an experience that drives attendees to think, feel, and act in alignment with the event goals, that’s a win. That’s how we create the magic.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:45.440)
I love that. Especially in the era of Instagram, social proof becomes part of the experience. One thing I loved was your example of taking over a department store and turning it into an interactive experience. Talk about how that idea came to life.

Emily Olson (06:20.540)
That store was in the client’s industry, so it aligned with their audience and created a strong foundation. The event’s goal was to reinforce a sense of community, so we brought in local vendors and restaurants to provide food stations. We tapped into the existing in-store experiences and added our own to connect attendees to both the client and the experience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:27.628)
It’s such a creative example—rather than a typical hotel ballroom, you created something immersive and aligned with the brand’s goals. I love it.

Emily Olson (07:57.542)
Thanks! One of my favorite things is creating a venue out of a non-traditional space. In this case, it was a retail store that wasn’t licensed to host events, so we had to figure out permitting and logistics for a private event serving alcohol. It was challenging, but also really fun—and a big part of what I love about this work.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:37.573)
Absolutely. So when you're working with more traditional B2B or networking-focused events, how do you bring in that same creative approach? Especially when you’re working with hotel ballrooms or less distinctive venues?

Emily Olson (09:36.198)
It’s about creating interactive moments—whether that’s with technology or between attendees. I like shared experiences: hands-on workshops, tasting stations, creative lounges. Even a small detail like a ribbon on a name badge that says “Ask me about...” helps people connect. Whether in a ballroom or a retail store, those moments help bring the human experience to life.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:40.718)
Yes, fostering conversations is so important. Branding also plays a major role—how do you help B2B clients promote their brand and values through events?

Emily Olson (11:26.780)
Events are more than logistics; they’re experiential brand storytelling. The experience becomes the brand. Attendees’ perceptions are shaped by every moment. Today, brands extend the event’s impact across time—pre-event content, on-site community-building, and post-event amplification. You have to think holistically and use the event as one piece of the overall brand ecosystem.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:41.194)
That’s such an important point. How do you help clients amplify their events before and after?

Emily Olson (12:53.272)
Often, it's about reminding them that pre- and post-event content is critical. Events aren’t standalone moments. You have to look at your full brand ecosystem—social plans, collaborations, even simple “before you go” emails. Strategy matters beyond the day-of logistics.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:49.006)
Absolutely. One thing I always appreciated when we worked together was your attention to detail. Even small misses—like lack of parking info or no name tags—can really impact the experience. That level of thoughtfulness matters so much.

Emily Olson (14:54.332)
Yes! I’m that person who organizes my life in Excel. It’s how my brain works, and it’s why I love this job.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:12.366)
Exactly. And when it comes to sponsorships—how do you help clients build creative, valuable sponsor packages?

Emily Olson (16:04.828)
Today, engagement is expected at every step. Sponsorship isn’t just logo placement anymore. It’s branded activations, speaking opportunities, curated lounges, wellness zones—even introvert spaces. The best sponsorships are interactive and 3D, not just static branding.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:26.830)
I’ve even seen booths with puppies to attract traffic! Partnering with shelters to bring rescue animals is such a smart idea.

Emily Olson (18:24.198)
I’m all in for puppy yoga—goats, kittens, any animal, I’ll be there.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:39.086)
Are there other creative networking ideas you’ve seen?

Emily Olson (18:53.640)
Yes—anything tied to values or purpose is trending. People want meaning: DEI, sustainability, mental health, community building. These aren’t side topics anymore; they’re front and center.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:54.254)
Agreed. Branding, values, and relationship-building are key in today’s buying journey. You mentioned ideas you thought might flop that actually worked. What’s an example?

Emily Olson (21:06.824)
Internal talent shows! I first did one for a utility company’s 100th anniversary. I thought it would be cringey—but it was amazing. Employees supported each other, showed off real talent, and it built community. We then did it at a retail brand’s leadership conference, and it killed. I’m officially a fan.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:55.502)
I love that. Community and authenticity—so powerful. I’m now thinking about what my own talent would be…

Emily Olson (23:27.260)
I can draft an Excel spreadsheet faster than anyone!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:30.478)
Amazing. Any final advice for people planning events?

Emily Olson (23:48.708)
Stick to your goals. Put them on a Post-it next to your screen and revisit them constantly. Event planning is hard—herding cats, managing chaos. But if what you’re doing doesn’t support the goal, don’t do it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:44.396)
That’s great advice. So, for people listening who want to reach you, where can they find you?

Emily Olson (26:48.052)
Visit our website: arrow-events.com, or email us at experience@arrow-events.com.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:02.528)
Thank you so much, Emily. Best of luck with all your upcoming events!

Emily Olson (27:11.580)
Thanks, Kerry. This was so much fun.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode with Emily Olson, be sure to subscribe and leave a review—it helps more growth-minded marketers like you discover the show.

And if you’re planning an event soon, remember: your brand isn’t just what you say—it’s what they experience. Make it memorable.

For more insights, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com, or connect with me, Kerry Curran, on LinkedIn.  We’ll see you next time.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Your Agency Growth Strategy Is Broken: How to Pivot Now to Stand Out and Get Shortlisted, host Kerry Curran sits down with Stephen Boehler, Partner at Mercer Island Group and trusted agency growth advisor.

Stephen delivers a blunt reality check for agencies struggling to get shortlisted, stand out, or win more pitches. The biggest problem? A broken strategy—and failure to show up like a brand. If your agency can’t articulate its value, differentiate in-market, or make a credible impression online, you’re not just behind—you’re invisible.

We dig into:

The 3-part growth flywheel: Be ready, be memorable, be findable

Why most agencies lose before the pitch process even begins

The shift from reactive pitching to proactive visibility and relevance

What today’s clients actually look for when shortlisting agency partners

Why clarity, consistency, and conviction in your story are your competitive edge

If you're leading new business, driving growth, or rethinking your agency's positioning—this episode is your wake-up call.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How do you build a brand that truly resonates in today’s market? One that feels human, inclusive, and authentic?

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, Marketing That Resonates: How Empathy and Representation Build Stronger Brands, I sit down with Melissa Moody, founder of Wednesday Women and former Google exec, to explore how empathy and representation create real business impact.

We dig into:  

How customer-centric storytelling earns attention and trust  

Why diversity and inclusion are revenue strategies, not just values  

How to build visibility for underrepresented voices (including your own)  

Ways to shift from promoting product features to elevating your audience’s identity and success  

Melissa also shares how she’s helping female executives move from operating quietly to showing up powerfully and why that visibility benefits not just the individual, but the brand.  

If you're ready to make your brand more relevant, more human, and more effective—this one’s for you.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most sales teams keep adding technology and training, yet deals still slip, buyers stall, and trust erodes. The problem isn’t effort. It’s that reps are being developed as pitch machines instead of trusted partners. And when curiosity, authenticity, and preparation are missing, pipeline performance suffers fast.

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast titled “The Real Pipeline Fix: How Coaching, Curiosity, and Authenticity Close More Deals,” Kerry Curran sits down with Lee Levitt, sales effectiveness coach and founder of The Accelerate Group. Lee has led marketing, sales, and enablement at companies like Oracle and Google, and he brings a contrarian but practical perspective. Coaching is not about information transfer. It is about behavior change. And that shift is where real revenue leverage lives.

You’ll hear why most frontline managers inspect deals instead of developing skills, how lack of deliberate practice quietly kills win rates, and why buyers default to the status quo when sellers fail to lower perceived risk. Lee breaks down what high-performing sellers actually do differently and how leaders can build those behaviors intentionally.

What you’ll take away:

Why sales training alone does not improve pipeline consistency

How curiosity and authenticity directly accelerate deal progression

The role of deliberate practice in improving buyer conversations

How preparation reframes buyer risk and reduces deal paralysis

Why sales enablement must have a strategic voice, not just a tactical one

Imagine a sales team that shows up prepared, listens deeply, connects solutions to real business outcomes, and earns trust before asking for commitment. That is what predictable revenue looks like.

Stay tuned to the end, where Lee explains how sales enablement leaders can earn a permanent seat at the strategy table and why that becomes an unfair advantage for long-term, scalable growth.
 

Chapter Highlights and Key Takeaways: 
00:00 The Real Pipeline Problem No One Wants to Admit
01:18 Why Coaching Beats Training Every Time
03:00 Deliberate Practice: Why Reps Shouldn’t Learn on Customers
04:24 When Leadership Messaging Doesn’t Match the Field Reality
06:50 The Leadership Behaviors That Quietly Kill Performance
07:58 The Two Traits That Separate Trusted Sellers from Pitch Machines
10:34 Coaching Curiosity: Turning Better Questions into Better Meetings
13:34 Preparation Is the Multiplier Most Teams Ignore
17:54 Buyer Paralysis: How Sellers Can Reduce Perceived Risk
21:43 Why Sales Enablement Must Think Beyond This Quarter
22:09 Building a Strategic Enablement Advisory Board
24:42 How to Engage External Experts Without Creating Dependency
25:16 The Unfair Advantage: How Enablement Earns a Strategic Voice

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The truth is: culture is infrastructure. It fuels resilience, engagement, and results. And in today’s climate of AI disruption, budget cuts, and constant change, a weak culture will cost you more than any missed marketing tactic.

In this episode titled The Culture Multiplier: Why People-First Leadership Is Your Most Underrated Revenue Strategy, host Kerry Curran sits down with Rachel Weeks, veteran marketing executive and HR tech leader, to explore how values-driven leadership creates a competitive advantage in times of uncertainty. Rachel reveals how transparency, empathy, and recognition aren’t just “feel-good” practices—they’re levers for retention and performance.

This isn’t about HR perks—it’s about protecting revenue, boosting productivity, and building a resilient growth engine.

You’ll discover how to:

Navigate layoffs and reorgs without breaking trust

Use recognition to lift productivity by 75%+

Build a culture that keeps employees engaged—even under pressure

Turn people-first leadership into a durable revenue strategy

Stay tuned until the end, where Rachel shares practical ways to create a culture of recognition—even without a big budget or formal platform.

If you want growth that lasts, this episode will change the way you lead.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran—B2B revenue-growth executive advisor, industry analyst, and host of Revenue Boost, a marketing podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you're serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of the competition.

In From Insight to Impact: Smarter Research for Personalization That Resonates, I sit down with Rachael Bassey. She's the research partner to SaaS companies and the founder of ContentCollab.co. We explore how small marketing teams can personalize content at scale through smarter, more targeted audience research. We dig into practical ways to uncover buyer pain points, engage prospects through collaboration, and create content that stands out—especially in a sea of generic AI overviews.

If you're looking for a way to connect your content strategy to pipeline impact, you don't want to miss this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the end, where Rachael shares how to turn contributors into loyal brand advocates and why that's the smartest way to grow both your content and your customer base. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so you don't miss future episodes packed with actionable advice. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.72)
So welcome Rachael, please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Rachael Bassey (00:07.279)
Hey everyone, I'm Rachael Bassey. People call me Ray—Ray of Sunshine, more like it. I work as a research partner for SaaS companies. My specialization or expertise is helping companies create original research reports. I'll dive into what these reports are and my process later, but in a nutshell, that’s it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:41.966)
Excellent. Well, thank you. I'm very excited to have you join us today because content is so critically important—especially original content and research specific to the audience. So talk to us a bit about what you're seeing and hearing as you're talking to your prospects or clients. What are the needs in the marketplace these days when it comes to getting smarter, better content?

Rachael Bassey (01:10.529)
Okay, before I get into that—thank you so much, Kerry, for having me. Really, thank you.

 

So two things:

 

One—AI. You have small companies that are like, “Why bother hiring a writer when I can just go to ChatGPT and say, ‘Help me with my content plan, content calendar, and 50 articles for my blog’ and get it done?”

 

But then, a lot of people can easily spot articles written by ChatGPT, and people are tired of the robotic voice—even though I use a lot of it. People want to hear things that actually sound human.

People are also hungry for data—things they can benchmark their performance against.
Then on the other hand, budgets are being cut everywhere—left, right, and center.

 

So CEOs and founders are asking, “Why should I invest more in marketing? How do we tie marketing to revenue?”
There’s a debate around, “Is the whole marketing funnel even relevant anymore?”

You just have different arguments around whether it’s important to invest in marketing or if we should even bother right now. That’s pretty much what I’m seeing in the space.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:01.484)
Yeah, definitely. And it's so true—I can't have a conversation about marketing without AI being front and center. There's a lot of value there, but to your point, if you're putting all your creativity into the AI model, you're not going to get the quality you need.

Adding to that, AI also impacts search results. If you're just producing generic content, your rankings will suffer. You have to get smarter about content structure so your expertise can rank better.

So much opportunity here. Talk to me about how you're solving this—how are you helping your clients?

Rachael Bassey (04:03.102)
Great. Okay, so I’ll just do a bit of a rundown.
I worked with a company called Databox back in 2019. I’m no longer with them, but we started what I like to call collaborative marketing before it was even a thing. Back then, people didn’t really care about talking to real people or experts and collaborating with them to create content.

Now you go on LinkedIn and see a lot of people talking about original research, but before it became the trend, we were doing it. We were a small marketing team. I was employee 25 in the company, and our team had just three people: John, Bella, and me.

When you have a small marketing team, you wear many hats. You might not even be an expert in the industry, yet you're expected to write 50 articles in two months. So we said, “Let’s collaborate with our customers and prospects.”

At the time, agencies made up the majority of Databox’s clients. I would spend so much time on directories like Agency Spotter, HubSpot, and Pipedrive to find and connect with them.

It made so much sense to involve these people in our content production process. We’d create simple surveys, ask them specific questions, collect their answers or insights, and publish blog articles based on their input.

Eventually, we stepped it up to create benchmark reports. For example, if you're a Facebook advertiser, and your click-through rate is 2.4%, what’s the industry average?

 

We could provide that kind of insight—so companies could compare and see where they stood.

That’s how we scaled from publishing two articles a week to an article every day.

I moved on from Databox and later worked at a company called Terkel—now known as Featured. If you know HARO, Featured is kind of a competitor.

I thought, “Okay, I did this for Databox, and I know it works—how can I do this for multiple companies at once?” So at Featured, I worked with smaller teams to help them understand it’s okay not to have a big marketing budget.

You can still do really good work if you focus on involving customers and prospects in your content creation process. Right now, if I were to write about civil engineering, it would be based only on what I find online. But if I talk to civil engineers who spend 8 hours a day on site, they’ll give me insights no AI model can produce.

Your experience, Kerry, is unique to you. ChatGPT can’t replicate it.

Then I started my own thing after Featured—but that’s the origin.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:07.552)
Excellent. So talk to me about the process though. You’re identifying the client’s target audience and interviewing them. You said you research to find the right experts—how do you even start with what to ask them?

Rachael Bassey (09:26.34)
Great. So it depends on the level I’m working with. For example, one current client—during our first meeting, I asked about their ideal clients, and the founder listed eight different groups. I said, “How do I even reach out to that many groups? You can’t possibly cater to eight.”

Some companies aren’t even clear on their ICP, so I always say, “First, we need to get that right.”

Because once you know your ICP, everything else is much easier.

So, first I ask:

• Who are your ideal clients?
• Where are they based?
• What do they talk about?
• What do they write about?

For this particular client, I’ve been spending 80% of my work time in Facebook groups. I don’t even know why I’m paying for LinkedIn Premium right now! I’m just listening to bloggers, creators, and entrepreneurs to understand what they’re really talking about and interested in.

Especially since this client is a Shopify theme developer, I’m trying to determine if the market actually wants what they’re building—or if it’s just a nice idea that nobody asked for.

Once I do enough listening, I reach out to these audiences with a basic survey I’ve created. That survey is designed to surface their pain points.

If a majority of respondents don’t list monetizing their content as a pain point, for example, then that’s a sign we shouldn’t be investing in a solution for it.

And sometimes people don’t even know they have a problem until you talk to them.

So first, I help my clients clarify their ICP—if they haven’t already. Many clients I've worked with thought they had their ICP nailed, but after talking to customers, they ended up pivoting or refining it.

Rachael Bassey (12:13.696)
Next, I work with them to define what I call the "Ideal Contributor Profile" too—not just the ideal customer.

For example, Kerry, if you were my ideal customer, I’d ask:

• Where do you live?
  
   
• What’s your title?
  
   
• What’s your industry?
  
   
• How many employees are at your company?
  
   

Sometimes, trying to reach a VP at a 5,000-person company is a waste of time. You’ll need approval from too many layers, and it’s like going to court.

So once we define who our ideal contributors are, I use LinkedIn filters—sometimes even certifications (like HubSpot Certified, for instance)—to find highly qualified individuals.

It’s not just about gathering insights. We want insights from people who can also become customers down the line. That way, the work serves both marketing and sales goals.

For example, one client was in influencer marketing. At first, they wanted to gather input from agencies. But I said, “Let’s focus on in-house influencer marketing professionals at eCommerce brands—because those are your buyers.”

So we shifted our survey strategy. Now, instead of collecting insights just for backlinks or SEO, we’re engaging the people who might actually buy the product.

That way, when the marketing manager follows up to thank them for contributing, it’s not just relationship-building—it’s lead generation.

We’ve even had contributors say, “I’ve been thinking about buying a tool like this—can I get a free trial?” Of course! That’s exactly the goal.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:10.028)
No—and you're so right. And you're so smart, because I think we spend—personally, I spend—so much time researching. But to actually start interviewing your target audience, especially those who aren’t already customers, is just brilliant.

It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s manageable. Especially if someone like you is guiding the process.

Tell us—how can people get in touch with you?

Rachael Bassey (27:43.904)
Rachael Bassey—not the American spelling! It’s R-A-C-H-A-E-L. That’s important. And Bassey is B-A-S-S-E-Y.

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, so that’s the best place to find me.

I’m currently working on my website: contentcollab.co. Or feel free to email me: rachael@contentcollab.co. That’s content and collab—C-O-L-L-A-B—dot co.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:24.682)
Excellent. Thank you, Rachael. I’ll put all your contact information in the show notes. And thank you for reaching out on LinkedIn and asking to be on the show—this topic was so actionable.

I already know what my takeaways are, and I’m sure our listeners will feel the same way. Thank you again.

Rachael Bassey (28:45.22)
Thank you so much, Kerry, for having me. This was lovely.

Huge thanks to Rachael Bassey for joining us today. Her insights on using original research to create personalized, relevant, and scalable content are exactly what modern marketers need right now.

If this episode sparked ideas for how your team can better connect with your audience, share it with a colleague—and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review.

For more strategies to connect marketing with revenue, head over to revenuebasedmarketing.com.

And please follow me, Kerry Curran, on LinkedIn. We’ll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran, B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you're serious about growth, hit subscribe to stay ahead of your competition.

In The New SEO Frontier: How Marketers Can Win Visibility in the Age of AI, I sit down with David Kirkdorffer. He's a B2B marketing strategist and generative SEO expert. We break down how your content, website, and messaging must evolve to be visible in LLM-powered search. We explore what's changed, what still works, and what's next—so your brand stays front and center no matter which AI engine your buyer turns to.

Be sure to stay to the end, where David shares why team alignment across content, SEO, PR, and partnerships is your best defense—and greatest opportunity—in an AI-first future. Let's go.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.422)
So, welcome, David. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

David Kirkdorffer (00:07.466)
Hi, Kerry, and thank you so much for bringing me on the show. My background: I am a B2B marketer. I’ve been doing B2B marketing for—let’s say—30-plus years. I have focused most of my career on generating leads for sales teams, and that is still my focus, though the way that is done nowadays has certainly changed.

I’ve worked mostly in technology companies, selling technology to technology departments—so IT tech for IT tech consumers. Over the years, that has gone from enterprise accounts, as technologies became more democratized, down to medium-sized businesses and small businesses.

So that’s briefly about me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:00.214)
Excellent. David, I know you have been deep into the research around what I’ll introduce as the evolution of SEO. Tell me: What are you hearing? What triggered your interest in diving into gaining visibility for brands within the GPTs and other AI engines?

David Kirkdorffer (01:25.994)
Right. OK, that’s a great question. Given my background of trying to get information into buyers’ hands—being buyer-centric—a number of years ago I focused on what we might call buyer enablement and the buyer experience: the buyer being successful in finding the information they’re looking for on our website. I realized that a lot of the great information buyers want sits behind a gate where you have to speak to a sales rep.

The idea I was working with—and many people, of course, not just me—was, “Can we get this information onto our website so that when buyers come, they can find what they need and say, ‘This looks like a good fit’?” Along come these LLMs, and now all of a sudden I’m thinking, “How do I AI-enable training? How do I make sure the AIs have the information that answers buyer questions?”

In a way, AI LLM tools are a disintermediating force separating my buyer from my answer. They’re turning to the ChatGPTs, the Geminis, the Perplexities, the Claudes, the Copilots, and various other tools—some specialized for particular domains. Our challenge is to make sure our answers are read, understood, and correctly represented within these LLMs so that, when a buyer goes there for an answer, our brand is visible.

It’s much more effective for a buyer to ask questions with ChatGPT, and you might ask the same question to four or five tools just to validate, because they all have different information sets, models, crawlers, and licensing agreements. Therefore, you may have high visibility in one and low visibility in another. Training data differs; retrieval data differs; the models themselves differ—so they have different “brains,” just like different people. That’s what brought me into this: trying to be customer-centric and helping my salespeople so that, when buyers do find information, our brand is there.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:27.744)
That’s excellent, David, and it’s such a hot topic. I don’t think I can go through a few hours of my day without it coming up. I know you’ve been evangelizing it a lot, which I’m sure generates many questions. What are the main questions people ask you about this capability and opportunity?

David Kirkdorffer (04:51.442)
Everyone wants to know, “What am I supposed to do? How is this different—is it different?” Two main lines of inquiry emerge. One comes from senior marketing leaders—the CMO or someone at a higher level—who wants to understand what they and their teams can do holistically. The other is very tactical: people approach it from their domain expertise—website, SEO, content—and ask, “What do I do within my lane that makes an impact?”

The truth is, it’s a bit of both. In my view, it’s a holistic problem to solve. You can operate in just one tactical lane—website, SEO, or content—and it will have an impact. When you combine them, the impact is amplified, and it should also involve your PR, partner, and demand-gen teams; their work can help or hurt how your brand is recognized and surfaces in answers. So those two lanes—holistic and tactical—intertwine, and where you start depends on team size and resources.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:48.354)
If the main question is “How do I do this?” what do you think people should be asking first? What’s the right starting point?

David Kirkdorffer (07:01.140)
I think you need a big-picture view of how this is different and what drives it—how GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) actually differs from SEO. It even has many acronyms: generative engine optimization, AI optimization, LLM optimization, and more.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:38.732)
Based on your work, which term do you prefer?

David Kirkdorffer (07:44.744)
I like “generative engine optimization.” Unfortunately, “GEO” means other things in other domains, which is part of the problem—both technically and from a brand standpoint. When we use shortcuts like acronyms, we know what they mean; the LLM doesn’t. It could interpret “MRO,” for example, as any of 50 different things until you spell it out first.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:24.150)
Earlier you said it starts with a mindset. What mindset should people adopt to lean into improving their strategies here?

David Kirkdorffer (08:46.292)
At the highest level, LLMs and GEO replace the short keyword query box with a large window where users add lots of context. Through vectorization—turning language into math—the LLM finds little chunks of information, the “needles,” rather than presenting a haystack of links. It compares those chunks, validates them against other sources, and synthesizes an answer.

We often don’t know or care where the answer came from, as long as it’s accurate. But that means the LLM isn’t reading your whole page; it’s reading segments. So this isn’t just a technical SEO challenge—it’s about the words themselves: how we phrase them, how we make them easy to understand, and how we avoid letting brand personality cloud clarity.

Because of “chunking,” answers often come from two or three sentences—maybe 200–300 words—not entire pages. So we need to optimize those chunks.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:06.506)
Before we dive deeper into tactics, explain how these platforms differ from Google’s traditional search engines and why that demands a different strategy.

David Kirkdorffer (13:41.514)
Think of GEO as standing on the shoulders of SEO. If your SEO is weak, the shoulders aren’t strong. Some say, “This is just a new kind of SEO,” and there’s truth in that. Others think, “We just need to do good marketing,” and that’s also true. But with GEO, some shortcuts we’ve taken—like heavy JavaScript or hidden tab content—now have new impacts because LLMs don’t execute JavaScript or click tabs.

For example, if your page uses tabs for five benefits, the LLM sees only the first one; it can’t click the others. It forces us to reevaluate design choices, because GEO cares about different things.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:11.054)
So SEO is shifting from technical crawlability to a content-first approach—almost back to the early days of SEO. When you talk about chunking content, best practices seem to be resurfacing. What should we consider when writing content now?

David Kirkdorffer (17:34.914)
The best practice is simply doing what we’ve always known: write clearly for the reader. LLMs struggle with poetic or highly stylized language; they understand literal, structured information. Our challenge is to provide that clarity without becoming too dry. In the future, LLMs may understand nuance better, but for now, literal clarity wins.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:09.686)
There’s still a technical aspect—different from technical SEO a few years ago—like tagging. Why is that more important than ever?

David Kirkdorffer (21:09.686)
We have semantic tags—H1, H2, H3, etc.—but many treat them as visual elements. You might find an H6 above an H2 because it looks good, but that confuses the LLM. Ideally, one H1 states what the page is about, multiple H2s mark subtopics, H3s detail components, and so on. When that hierarchy is broken, the LLM can’t map ideas correctly, and your content may be excluded from answers.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:57.034)
Old is new again: off-site SEO also matters. Why is consistency off-site so critical, and what should brands do?

David Kirkdorffer (25:57.034)
B2B marketers want their message on as many authoritative sites as possible. A small brand’s site may have little traffic, so its signal is weak. Getting listed in directories or partner sites amplifies that signal. In the old days, “brand police” ensured consistent boilerplates—25-, 50-, 100-word descriptions—so customers weren’t confused. LLMs work the same way: if they see the same wording consistently, they trust it. When every team tweaks the message, it creates variations that confuse the model, so consistency is key.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:33.718)
This has been super valuable. For listeners who know they need to start right away, what’s the most important first step?

David Kirkdorffer (30:59.392)
First, learn how these systems work. You don’t need deep technical knowledge, but understand the impact. If you’re in a specific lane—SEO, content, web—still learn the bigger picture so your choices align with the new reality. Then triage: audit where you’ll work first based on team size and resources.

Gather the whole team—web, SEO, content, PR, demand gen—so everyone hears one story and understands how their actions affect each other. Agencies should know what they can and can’t do and set expectations. After learning and auditing, remember this is ongoing, like SEO has always been.

Finally, be present where your customers go. Different LLMs rely on different data sources—Reddit, Wikipedia, licensed content—and those arrangements change. Go where your customers already spend time.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (36:06.339)
Excellent. For folks who want to learn more or bring you in to help their team, how can they reach you?

David Kirkdorffer (36:42.518)
The best way is through LinkedIn. Search “David Kirkdorffer.” My email is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. I post about these topics and provide training classes—very hands-on and tactical, covering tabs, accordions, LLMS text, schema and chunkability, and more. Feel free to DM or email me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (37:52.238)
Perfect. I’ll include those links in the show notes. David, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.

David Kirkdorffer (38:05.046)
Thank you, Kerry, and thank you to the audience. If you’ve made it this far, that’s a compliment. I appreciate it and enjoyed the conversation.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (38:15.050)
Excellent—thanks!

Huge thanks to David Kirkdorffer for joining me on the show. If your brand isn't showing up in AI-generated answers, this conversation is your roadmap to change that. From content structure to message consistency to offsite visibility, David laid out actionable ways to adapt your SEO strategy to this new era of AI-driven buyer behavior. If you found this valuable, share it with your team and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

And for more strategic insights on revenue growth through marketing, head to revenuebasedmarketing.com or follow me, Kerry Curran, on LinkedIn today.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran, B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you're serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of your competition today.

In The Last Untapped Channel: Driving Precision, Attention, and Revenue with Smart Digital Out-of-Home, I sit down with Peter Schofield. He's the VP of Brand Partnerships at Atmosphere TV. We explore how digital out-of-home advertising has evolved into one of the most targeted, high-impact channels in modern media. From smart targeting and unskippable content to real-world attribution and creative flexibility, Peter breaks down how brands are turning physical spaces into revenue-generating media environments.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Peter shares how top brands are using API-powered digital out-of-home to personalize in-the-moment engagement at scale. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.698)
So welcome, Peter. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Peter Schofield (00:07.960)
Thanks, Kerry. I'm excited to be here today. I'm Peter Schofield, VP of Brand Partnerships with Atmosphere TV. I've been in the marketing and advertising space for the better part of 30 years. I've always been curious about human behavior, social sciences, marketing, and advertising—connecting brands with people and people with people. That always puts you at the front of technology and innovation. So I've always been excited about that, and that's where I've spent most of my adult career.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:41.112)
Excellent, great. I'm excited to dive into your area of expertise. When we first met and dove into Atmosphere TV and your capabilities, I got really excited about the unique aspect of connecting consumers with brands and helping brands with their narrative and storytelling. So, excited to dive in. Talk about out-of-home—what trends are you seeing and hearing today?

Peter Schofield (01:18.670)
Sure. The out-of-home market, specifically the digital out-of-home market, is certainly thriving. The extraordinary reach, context, and impact of digital out-of-home are literally reshaping consumer engagement. Brands and agencies looking to move the needle are tapping into screens and spaces that have been previously overlooked, undervalued, or underutilized.

Peter Schofield (01:48.192)
Three key elements that are a consistent part of the narrative—what folks are looking for in their investment—are efficacy, deliverability, and accountability. Out-of-home provides all of those.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:59.448)
Definitely. I think the advent and growth of digital out-of-home really revamped and breathed new life into what we knew as traditional billboards, bus stops, etc. It’s very cool to see the evolution and the more advanced targeting capabilities.

Peter Schofield (02:26.644)
It is sophisticated now. It’s not your father’s billboards, as they say, right? It's the optimal blend of scale, mass reach, and local precision. Brand-safe channels are really making this a distinguished place to market, for sure.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:45.142)
Yeah. How are you seeing that increased interest in out-of-home as part of the media mix?

Peter Schofield (02:51.706)
I think folks are recognizing it as a real opportunity to align messaging with not only what people are doing, but why they're doing it. At the neighborhood level, we can connect with what people are doing, how they’re feeling, and what they’re experiencing in real time—where they live, work, and play. It’s inherently location-based and enhanced significantly by contextual targeting. That’s where companies like Atmosphere really come into play.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:26.784)
Definitely. There are so many stats that prove the engagement and growth opportunity. I know you had some from eMarketer. Want to dive into those?

Peter Schofield (03:40.846)
Yes. In 2024, out-of-home revenue in the U.S. was just over $9 billion—a 4.5% increase from 2023. More notably, digital out-of-home, where I focus, represented about 34% or $3 billion of that market, also growing 4.5% year-over-year.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:30.104)
Definitely. With location targeting and dynamic creative, it’s a perfect blend of niche targeting and visual storytelling.

Peter Schofield (04:56.696)
Absolutely. One person described it as, “Out-of-home is where attention lives.” It lets marketers deliver the right message at the right moment—contextually relevant, unskippable, and effective.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:11.700)
Right—and you can’t skip an ad when it’s in a waiting room or gym. It captures attention in a way digital often can’t.

Peter Schofield (05:25.230)
Exactly. It’s never been more measurable, creative, or smarter. The relevance and flexibility are a huge appeal. With tools like audience data, dayparting, mobile IDs, and foot traffic studies, we now provide insights that were previously out of reach in traditional out-of-home.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If today’s episode sparked ideas, gave you new tools, or made you think differently, don’t keep it to yourself—share it with your team or your LinkedIn network. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. For more growth insights, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com, and keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in marketing. See you next time.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran, B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.

In every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you’re serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of the competition.

In The Rise of the Fractional CMO: How to Accelerate Revenue Growth Without the Overhead, I sit down with Virginie Glaenzer, a fractional CMO, tech entrepreneur, and community builder.

We explore how fractional marketing leaders are reshaping go-to-market execution, AI adoption, and executive alignment across today’s most innovative organizations.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Virginie shares her advice on how to scope your first fractional engagement and make an immediate impact, without the overhead.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.148)
So, welcome, Virginie. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (00:09.086)
Thank you so much, Kerry, for having me on your podcast. I’m really excited—I think the work you’re doing is amazing. My name is Virginie—Virginie Glaenzer. I’m originally from France and am your typical immigrant. I’ve had quite an interesting journey: I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, started a couple of software businesses, and had my fair share of successes and failures.

After 17 years in Silicon Valley, I moved to New York for about 12 years, where I served as VP of Marketing and CMO for mid-size organizations. I’ve been in D.C. for the last year and a half. Over the past 30 years, most of my career has been in B2B SaaS tech, helping organizations. Today, as a fractional CMO, I enjoy supporting small- to mid-size companies that are trying to disrupt their industries—mostly in tech, where technology is part of their offering. That’s just a little bit about me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:21.594)
Thank you. I’m very excited to speak with you today. You have a wealth of experience, but I want to start by diving into fractional CMOs and the evolution of fractional executives. I know you serve both as a fractional CMO and as the leader of Acorn Oak, so I’d love to hear what you’ve seen regarding this evolution and why you find it so valuable.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (01:54.804)
That’s a great question. I actually fell into the fractional model—I never thought I would become a consultant—but it has changed my life, and I love it. I chose the fractional path because I wanted to make real, lasting change. When I was a VP of Marketing, I found that people wanted me to make them feel comfortable instead of guiding them through change. As a fractional CMO, I offer an unbiased outside perspective, removing the anxiety and internal angst that often accompany big decisions—something I couldn’t do as a full-time employee.

My focus isn’t on protecting a title or playing politics; it’s about building a legacy, not job security. As a result, I avoid the “drink-the-Kool-Aid” syndrome that can cloud judgment. The fractional model really works, and I think it took off after COVID because companies realized they could hire talent anywhere. When you hire people remotely, you don’t see the hours; you see the output. A fractional executive who works two days a week can deliver the equivalent of four days from a traditional employee—and often, that’s all a company needs.

AI is also disrupting organizations. Internal employees may hesitate to rock the boat, but a fractional executive will do whatever is necessary to drive change.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:01.762)
I love that example—doing in two days what others might do in four—because when you can focus solely on the initiative, you avoid the distractions of full-time employment and get more done. Another benefit is that fractional CMOs must stay on top of trends—from AI to strategy—and can apply learnings from one client to another, an opportunity full-time employees don’t always have.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (04:59.680)
Absolutely. Working with multiple clients gives you a different view of each market. You come in with broad experience, fresh perspectives, and numerous frameworks. It’s a win–win—deeply satisfying for the individual and invaluable for the organization.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:28.266)
I’m seeing a trend: six years ago, most engagements were project-based—solving urgent challenges over three to six months. Now, clients hire me as a fractional CMO for assignments that can last a couple of years. As long as you’re helping the company reach its next growth stage, why not?

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (05:57.428)
Exactly. Hiring a fractional CMO can be a smart way to secure expert support without the full-time cost. When should a company consider a fractional CMO? I’ve seen three common scenarios:

1. The company is growing, but marketing isn’t scaling with it.
   
    
2. You’re facing a market shift—a funding round, product pivot, or another fundamental change.
   
    
3. You’re tired of disconnected campaigns and need integrated strategy and execution.
   
    

For companies without a CMO, a fractional CMO brings strategic guidance, makes marketing proactive instead of reactive, and prevents wasting money on tactics that don’t drive growth.

If you already have a CMO, a fractional CMO can augment and elevate the internal team by:

• Playing “bad cop” when needed, helping leaders stay aligned during tough decisions.
  
   
• Providing strategic pressure relief without stepping on toes—I take the anxiety out of the organization.
  
   
• Rolling up sleeves and owning delivery when necessary.
  
   

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:41.024)
Those are excellent examples—for companies without a CMO and for those with one. CMO turnover is high, often because a CMO fits one stage but not the next. Removing them isn’t always best; sometimes they lack performance-marketing depth or AI expertise. A fractional CMO lets you keep institutional knowledge while adding new skills.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (10:01.952)
Absolutely. In today’s uncertain economy, the fractional model makes even more sense. It’s a cost-effective way to keep driving the company without paying for a full-time executive. I expect more organizations will take this path.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:31.994)
I agree. Startups and scale-ups may go sales-led and stall. Bringing in a fractional CMO to establish strategic foundations can be crucial. You talk a lot about AI. What services and strategies do you provide around transformation and AI?

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (11:31.222)
Sure. AI is a major focus. I help clients with several business challenges. For example, tariffs are front and center; they’re an opportunity to revisit every part of the business and optimize. From a marketing perspective, we need to adapt to GEO—Generative Engine Optimization—to stay visible as algorithms evolve. Some call it AIO, but the point is visibility.

AI has changed how we work. Initially, it saved time; next, it improved quality; now, it changes how we think about our work. Resistance exists: in a recent webinar, 0 % of attendees had an AI policy, yet 60 % used AI professionally. That’s a risk we must address.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:29.272)
Wow.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (14:51.318)
Exactly. Another area is AI chatbots. Customer experience can’t be an afterthought—if users don’t like the experience, they go elsewhere. Leadership resistance also exists: many engineers resist AI, yet Google reports that 25 % of its code is now AI-generated, expected to reach 50 % within a year. Marketers sit between innovation and legal risk; we must work closely with legal to use AI responsibly.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:03.492)
That’s smart. An experienced fractional CMO can guide organizations through those challenges. We’ve focused on fractional CMOs, but tell us about Acorn Oak and the community of fractional C-suite advisors you’ve built.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (17:46.540)
Absolutely. If you’re hiring a fractional executive, choose someone who belongs to a community. At Acorn Oak—and other networks like TechCXO—we’re a trusted group of fractional executives. When you hire one of us, you gain cultural fit, synergy, and faster results. We already know one another, so alignment is immediate, and there’s no ego.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:17.262)
That’s great. What advice would you give a company considering a fractional CMO or other executive?

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (19:43.406)
First, define the pain. I always ask: What’s the priority? A clear understanding of the challenge leads to a clear scope and a successful partnership. Second, work with someone in a community; they bring broader resources. Finally, don’t wait—hiring a full-time CMO can take a year; hiring a fractional CMO can take two to three weeks from the initial call to weekly execution.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:26.318)
Definitely. Thank you for sharing your expertise. How can listeners find you?

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (21:47.764)
I’m an open book. If you Google my name, you’ll find me. I’m on LinkedIn and, less frequently, on Twitter. You can also visit acornoak.net or techcxo.com.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:09.494)
Excellent. I’ll include those links in the show notes. Virginie, thank you so much for sharing your story. We’ve all learned a lot today.

Virginie Glaenzer, Frac. CMO (22:18.764)
Thank you, Kerry. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this episode sparked a new idea or perspective, be sure to follow the show and leave us a quick review. It helps us grow and keeps the insights coming.

And if you’re ready to explore what fractional leadership could look like inside your business, head to revenuebasedmarketing.com for more expert strategies, CMO resources, and growth frameworks.

Until next time, keep leading with impact. We’ll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran—revenue growth strategist, go-to-market advisor, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Every week, I sit down with the sharpest minds in marketing, sales, and strategy to unpack real-world tactics that drive measurable revenue growth. No fluff—just bold, actionable insights to help you outpace your competition. If you're serious about scaling smarter, hit subscribe and let's boost your bottom line together.

Today's episode: Packaging and Pricing—the Key Revenue Strategy Most CEOs Miss. I'm joined by Roee Hartuv, a pricing and packaging expert helping B2B companies unlock hidden revenue and tie pricing to ROI. In this episode, we discuss the critical growth lever most CEOs miss—and how that lever leads to faster expansion, stronger retention, and more confident salespeople.

Stay tuned until the end, where Roee shares a practical action you can take today and where to find free resources to help you get smarter about pricing and start driving revenue growth now. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.155)
Welcome, Roee. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Roee Hartuv (00:06.326)
Hello, and thanks for having me. My name is Roee Hartuv. I currently focus on pricing and packaging as an advisor. Over the past five years, I’ve worked in the broader area of go-to-market excellence, helping transform go-to-market strategies and operations. Before that, I was a SaaS—or software—seller.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:35.745)
Excellent. Thank you, Roee. We’re excited to have you back. This is actually your second time with us. Last time, we covered different stages of go-to-market with a focus on customer success and the importance of net and gross recurring revenue. Today, I want to dive into what you’re focusing on now. Let’s talk about willingness to pay and your specialty at your new company.

Roee Hartuv (01:12.236)
In the past five years, I’ve helped companies generate more revenue—everyone’s top priority. Most conversations revolve around process improvements, automation, or AI-enabled productivity, all aimed at increasing win rates and reducing churn. I’ve done all that, but I realized one lever delivers the best ROI and is often the quickest and simplest to pull: pricing and packaging.

Once I understood that, I decided to spend most of my time there—helping companies increase revenue by getting pricing and packaging right. You don’t necessarily need a new product; you need a smarter way to package what you already have. That’s what we do at Willingness to Pay: pricing and packaging, and we’ve seen great results.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:02.094)
I agree. Companies spend a lot of effort cutting costs and increasing efficiency, yet overlook pricing. When prospects contact you, what business challenges are they trying to solve?

Roee Hartuv (03:43.564)
When they come to us, they already sense a pricing or packaging issue—and most companies have one. Early on, no single person truly owns pricing. Is it finance, the CRO, product, or product marketing? Because no one owns it, pricing often stays untouched for years while products, features, and value grow. For example, a client recently added a fantastic AI feature but decided to charge only $5,000 a year—far below the value it delivers.

The main problem is that companies don’t adapt pricing and packaging to market dynamics. As a result, they leave money on the table. The most common pain we hear: “Our sellers keep talking features instead of value. They give big discounts, and we know we’re underpricing.” That’s the core challenge: enabling value-based selling through better packaging.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:12.399)
Beyond revenue growth, pricing can boost average contract value and reduce churn. Still, many leaders hesitate to raise prices. What objections do you hear most, and how do you address them?

Roee Hartuv (05:38.68)
Two big fears: First, customer success worries that price increases will trigger churn. Second, sales fears that higher list prices will tank win rates—“We’re already discounting!” We mitigate these with a four-step process:

1. Internal validation—get input from sellers and stakeholders.
   
    
2. Customer interviews—talk to 5–20 close customers using a structured methodology. We start with value proposition, then packaging, then pricing model, and only last reveal price levels.
   
    
3. Controlled sales test—roll the new model to a small “demo” team and watch results.
   
    
4. Phased rollout—once it works, deploy to the full sales org, then migrate existing customers in waves, starting with low-risk accounts.
   
    

The full cycle takes 12–18 months. Some customers may leave, but the revenue uplift from others outweighs the loss. It’s also a chance to offboard underpaying, resource-draining customers.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:02.094)
Your approach blends qualitative and quantitative research. How do you determine new price points?

Roee Hartuv (07:39.884)
We start with existing customer data: what each segment pays today, usage patterns, and realized value. We also benchmark competitors’ pricing to gauge market tolerance. Then we model scenarios, aligning them with objectives—doubling revenue, raising ACV, reducing churn, etc. Packaging is a separate exercise: instead of “good-better-best” by feature, we bundle around jobs-to-be-done or business outcomes. That naturally steers sales conversations toward impact, not features.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:12.129)
For leaders listening today, what’s the very first step you’d suggest?

Roee Hartuv (18:33.323)
If you haven’t raised prices in years, start by increasing everything 5 %. Inflation is real, and you’re likely undercharging. That simple move captures low-hanging fruit before a full pricing project. When you’re ready for a deeper overhaul, there’s plenty of free DIY material on our site, WillingnessToPay.com, or you can reach me on LinkedIn. If you need hands-on help, we’re here.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:19.619)
Excellent. I’ll include those links in the show notes. Roee, thank you for joining us again—I always learn so much from you.

Roee Hartuv (24:55.916)
Thank you, Kerry. It was my pleasure.

Thank you, Roey, for another incredible conversation. His insights on packaging and pricing are a must-listen for any CEO or go-to-market leader looking to scale smarter. If you found this episode valuable, please leave a review and hit subscribe to Revenue Boost. And check the show notes for links to Roey’s work at willingnesstopay.com and his LinkedIn profile.

For more tools and frameworks to fuel marketing-driven revenue growth, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com. Until next time.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine.

I'm your host, Kerry Curran—revenue growth–obsessed, go-to-market expert, and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer success to unpack the real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth. If you like what you hear, please be sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform. It helps us reach more leaders like you.

In today's episode, Turning Data Chaos Into Clarity: How Smart Marketers Turn Metrics Into Go-to-Market Momentum, I’m joined by Kim Tran, Head of Marketing and Business Development. Together, we take a deep dive into one of the most critical and overlooked challenges in modern B2B marketing: dirty, disjointed, and disconnected data.

Kim shares her firsthand experience navigating data chaos, aligning stakeholders, and building the systems and skills needed to transform flawed inputs into strategic growth. Stay tuned until the end of today’s episode to hear how Kim recommends building your data literacy and AI readiness—one tech stack at a time. Let’s go.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.560) So, welcome, Kim. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Kim Tran (00:07.276) Hi, Kerry. Thank you for having me. Hi, everyone. My name is Kim Tran. I am currently the Head of Marketing and Business Development.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:18.866) Excellent. Kim, we’re excited to have you back—this is your second time on the show. Last time, you did a great episode on change management and why it’s so important for marketers. We’ll include that episode in the show notes; I learned a lot from it. Today we’re talking about data and data governance. Marketers have access to so much data now that it can be overwhelming. We all want to use it to get smarter and invest more strategically, but how do we know which data to use and how to use it? Can you share what you’re seeing?

Kim Tran (01:14.946) Yes. A bit of background: I’ve spent the past decade in tech software, particularly in highly regulated industries—most recently ed-tech and financial services. In those sectors, we dealt with an abundance of sensitive data. A major challenge is that data is often siloed across different technologies and teams, and it’s not always clear who is responsible for it or who can access it. Whether you’re in a small company, where maybe only one person owns the data, or in a Fortune 500 firm with many data “cooks,” marketers need to become good data stewards and stay curious. The days when marketers could focus solely on brand or creative work are gone—especially in the age of AI. We’ve reached a critical inflection point: we now deal with synthetic, AI-generated data in addition to human-created data. Another challenge is systems thinking. Marketers must understand how data connects across teams; too often, we see a single metric and make knee-jerk decisions without context.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:13.888) Absolutely. For marketing leaders who are just beginning to think strategically about data, what first steps can they take to establish a solid foundation?

Kim Tran (04:37.838) Great question. We tend to jump into execution—looking for quick wins and feeling pressure from all sides—but data strategy is a long-term play. Your automation workflows, personalization efforts, and data privacy compliance will all depend on that foundation. First, learn how to learn. Many marketers come from creative backgrounds, and diving into technical tools can feel scary. I encourage hands-on learning: log into your marketing-automation platform or Salesforce and explore the data yourself. You can’t scale on bad data. Second, remember that marketers must be discerning. AI can ingest data faster than humans ever will, but if that data is flawed, the output will be flawed. Finally, create a culture of learning together. My team works closely with IT to clean our data, focusing on quality over quantity. These skills are increasingly non-negotiable as AI and synthetic data become the norm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:04.142) Some marketers come from more creative roles and might feel intimidated by data. What misconceptions do you see, and how do you address them?

Kim Tran (08:34.636) One misconception stems from fear of becoming obsolete. I started in B2B tech 11 years ago, just as marketing automation platforms were taking off. The same anxieties we now see with AI existed then. If your workflows rely on outdated data, AI will simply generate inaccurate outputs faster. Another misconception is that marketers can remain purely creative. In reality, you must reverse-engineer from your goals. Whether you need more revenue, cost savings, or compliance, work backward to build the right workflows. AI can be an “over-confident intern.” It may sound authoritative but can hallucinate. Critical thinking and strong data foundations are essential.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:36.680) You mentioned aligning data metrics with business goals. How do you ensure stakeholders speak the same language?

Kim Tran (11:45.516) I always ask stakeholders what matters most: pipeline? Lead quality? At a large enterprise, my only KPI used to be the number of leads. In a smaller company, I can’t rely on volume alone. Two years ago, we cleaned our Salesforce pipeline—eliminating legacy data from acquisitions. Now, while we still track MQL and SAL rates, we focus on pipeline health and conversion rates. Aligning metrics to leadership’s priorities—revenue and quality—keeps everyone on the same page. Avoid blanket statements like “SEO is dead” or “events don’t work.” Often, that’s survivorship bias—you’re only looking at the data you have, ignoring missing context. Ask broader questions. For instance, when acquisition costs tripled, I asked why retention was also triple. We discovered users were gaming limited-time offers. That insight shifted our strategy entirely.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:10.264) For listeners who want to improve their data literacy, what foundational skills or resources do you recommend?

Kim Tran (26:31.852) Start by mastering the tech stack you already have. If you inherited Salesforce, dive in—pull reports, explore the data, and learn its quirks. Seek out resources like DataCamp and General Assembly. On LinkedIn, communities such as Women in AI share practical content. Finally, remember the value of learning together.

My young daughter is learning Mandarin, and her teachers reward participation—even mistakes. Adults need that same mindset: it’s okay to be beginners again. As you build confidence with your data, you’ll be better equipped to tackle larger AI initiatives and communicate insights to leadership.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:10.505) Thank you, Kim. How can listeners connect with you?

Kim Tran (30:19.340) If you’re interested in data and information-governance solutions, visit gimel.com. Personally, I’m sharing my data-literacy journey on LinkedIn—find me at Kim Tran, I’m always open to virtual coffee chats, especially in the DC metro area.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:54.798) Fantastic. Thanks again, Kim. Great to have you back, and I look forward to having you on again soon.

Kim Tran (31:03.096) Thank you, Kerry

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this episode gave you new ways to think about data alignment or building smarter marketing systems, share it with a teammate who needs to hear it. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app—it helps other revenue leaders like you find us. And if you're looking to build a better go-to-market strategy rooted in real metrics and real results, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com. Until next time: align your data, learn together, and scale with purpose.

.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That’s a quote from Matt Greitzer and a sneak peek at today’s episode. Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine. I’m your host, Kerry Curran: revenue growth–obsessed, go-to-market expert, and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer success to unpack the real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth.

If you like what you hear, please be sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform. It helps us reach more leaders like you.

Today’s episode is all about the power—and the promise—of unified customer data. In From Siloed to Strategic: How Unified Customer Data Fuels Predictive Marketing, I’m joined by Matt Greitzer, CEO and co-founder of Actable. Together, we explore how smart brands are turning fragmented data into actionable intelligence using AI, clean cloud infrastructure, and strategic alignment across teams.

Whether you’re dealing with outdated systems or trying to scale predictive modeling, this episode walks through the foundations of better segmentation, smarter media targeting, and lifecycle personalization that drives real results.

Stay tuned until the end to hear Matt’s practical advice for data readiness—and what to do if your ESP is still your database. Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.432):
So welcome, Matt. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Matt Greitzer (00:06.898):
Sure. Hi, Kerry. Thanks for having me. My name is Matt Greitzer and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Actable. Actable is a company that works with enterprises to organize and enhance their first-party customer data to get them ready for AI-driven scoring and segmentation.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:30.016):
Excellent. You've been in the media space, media buying, and strategy. Talk a bit about your background before you got to Actable and how you identified the need for customer data.

Matt Greitzer (00:44.5):
Sure, yeah. That’s right. I spent 20 years in media, ad tech, and advertising. I started my career in the dial-up era at a company called Avenue A, which became Razorfish. I had a few different roles there, but the most formative one for me was running the search engine marketing practice, where I really got into the quantitative side of marketing.

I then started the programmatic media practice at Razorfish and eventually left to start a business with a former co-founder of mine called Accordant Media, one of the first programmatic trading desks in the space—again using quantitative information to make better media buying decisions.

We were acquired by Dentsu in 2016. Through that acquisition, we ended up running the programmatic practice at Dentsu. Dentsu had also acquired a much larger company called Merkle that same day. That’s where I first got exposed to first-party customer data. We worked very closely with a group at Merkle that used first-party customer data to build segmentation and use it for targeting in advertising.

From that experience, I realized that this would be the future—how marketers would create differentiation in the face of signal deprecation and increasing personalization needs. So I left Dentsu in 2019 and in 2020, co-founded Actable with Craig Shin, a long-time colleague. We worked together at Razorfish and Accordant.

Our thesis at Actable was that enterprises would create differentiation with their own customer data—but they’d need help organizing it coherently and bridging the gap between IT (who owns the tech) and marketing (who uses it). We’ve stayed true to that ever since.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:41.740):
Yeah, thank you. You've got such a rich background across both media buying and internal data challenges. I remember in the late 2000s, "big data" became the buzzword—brands and marketers suddenly had an influx of data. But now we’re seeing how much smarter we can actually get with it.

So talk about the business challenges you’re helping solve today and how the data connection applies at a strategic level.

Matt Greitzer (04:39.362):
Sure. The business challenges are the same ones most marketers and advertisers face: reducing customer acquisition cost, decreasing churn, and improving retention.

What we see is that companies have spent a lot on tech and data collection, but have suboptimally organized that data. So we come in and say: the problem isn’t the data itself—it’s how it's structured. Most enterprises don’t have a coherent infrastructure to activate customer data effectively.

Think of it like a car—you don’t buy it for the engine, but you can’t go anywhere without one. Similarly, if you don’t have a strong data foundation, you can’t activate it strategically. The whole promise of “data-driven marketing” has only partially been realized because foundational customer data is often disorganized.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:56.371):
Right. And it's not just for ad targeting. You’re helping unlock that holistic customer view. Talk about how that data powers broader business goals like predictive modeling or churn prevention.

Matt Greitzer (07:24.192):
Absolutely. We work with a top 10 grocer—doing $16–20B annually. If they lose a customer, that’s a massive revenue gap. We helped unify their in-store, web, and app data to identify signals of churn. That allowed them to proactively retain at-risk customers.

It’s a $60M+ opportunity annually for them. But without unified data, they’d never have seen the signal patterns to act on.

And this isn’t limited to grocers. Whether it’s increasing basket size or new customer acquisition, we focus on identifying signals that lead to the right interventions at the right time.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:15.404):
That’s so smart. I know you also help predict next purchases or propensity to buy, which helps brands prompt that next transaction. So what verticals are you most active in?

Matt Greitzer (09:44.418):
Retail is a big one—grocers, apparel, and big-box retailers. We also work with CPG brands (who are newer to customer data), publishing (especially subscription-based models), and financial services. We’re not vertically exclusive, but those four are where we’ve built the most depth.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:46.926):
Makes sense. Let’s talk tech—what kind of systems do you typically start with? How do you bring these data sets together?

Matt Greitzer (11:06.880):
The starting point is almost always a well-structured cloud-based customer data warehouse. You’d be surprised how many enterprises don’t have one. It’s foundational—and not that expensive or time-consuming to implement.

For us, Google is our primary partner. From there, we help unify web, transaction, offline, and media exposure data. Then we layer in customer data platforms (CDPs), which help with orchestration and identity resolution. But CDPs are just one part of the solution.

Beyond that, we’ve built our own AI capabilities for scoring and segmentation—so clients can identify high- and low-value customers automatically and activate those insights across channels.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:29.582):
Yes! So first it’s unified data, then segmentation, then AI. That’s how you’re enabling predictive modeling and smarter engagement.

Can you give another example?

Matt Greitzer (13:50.636):
Sure. We work with a large retailer that’s traditionally relied on catalogs. What we found is mailing catalogs to high-propensity buyers has minimal impact—they’d buy anyway. But mailing to low-propensity buyers had huge lift. That insight saved them tons in print costs and drove more incremental revenue. It was only possible with better segmentation.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:04.194):
So smart—and so much more effective. Suppressing low-propensity buyers from media targeting must also drive efficiency.

Matt Greitzer (15:38.630):
Exactly. Suppression is a great tactic—but you need the data structure to identify who to suppress. That’s why the foundation matters. Once you’ve got the “engine,” you can go places.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:58.380):
And once the data is unified, you can also personalize messaging and creative, right?

Matt Greitzer (16:48.514):
Absolutely. But the challenge is that CMOs often don’t own the data. IT or a CTO does. We’ve gotten good at aligning both sides by focusing on use cases and ROI.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:32.930):
That’s a huge value add—being the translator between IT and marketing. This is what’s needed for real company-wide revenue growth.

Matt Greitzer (19:40.450):
Exactly. Customer data is a powerful asset—but too few companies know how to unlock it. We step in and help them do just that.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:57.070):
So true. For anyone listening, what do they need to have in place before they’re ready to work with you?

Matt Greitzer (20:32.698):
Honestly, nothing. We meet clients wherever they are. Whether your ESP is still your customer database, or you’re more mature, we always start with use cases. That’s how we define success—and how to get there.

We also have a free Customer Data Readiness Assessment on our website. It’s a 5-minute quiz that helps teams benchmark where they are and what to do next.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:15.596):
Perfect. So how can people find you and learn more?

Matt Greitzer (22:23.394):
We’re at actable.com — that’s A-C-table.com — and I’m at matt@actable.com. Feel free to reach out!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:39.840):
Excellent. We’ll include that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Matt. This was such a smart and helpful conversation.

Matt Greitzer (23:09.228):
Thanks for having me, Kerry. I hope it was helpful to your listeners.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:14.478):
Absolutely. Take care!

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this episode gave you a new way to think about customer data, predictive modeling, or cross-functional alignment, send it to a teammate or your favorite data partner. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app—it helps other revenue leaders find us. And if you're ready to unlock smarter segmentation, cleaner data, and better results across your go-to-market strategy, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm your host, Kerry Curran revenue-growth-obsessed, go-to-market expert, and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer success to unpack the real-world strategies that drive sustainable revenue growth. If you like what you hear, please be sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform. It helps us reach more leaders like you.

Today’s episode is for any agency or B2B services leader trying to scale new business smarter. I work with a lot of agencies who need to move from referrals or founder-led growth to a robust go-to-market engine. B2B SaaS and tech companies have mastered the GTM framework—but agencies are still lagging behind. Except for one.

In Smarter Targeting, Stronger Growth: How ICP and GTM Rigor Unlock Scale, Lee Aho, CRO of PerformCB, joins us to share how his team applied modern B2B go-to-market best practices to hyper-target the ideal customer profile and drive exponential results with a performance-first model.

Stay tuned until the end of today’s episode, where Lee shares how they use a can’t-miss offer strategy to win top-tier clients faster. Let’s go.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.655)
Welcome, Lee. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Lee Aho (00:07.052)
Thanks, Kerry.

I’m Lee Aho, Chief Revenue Officer at PerformCB. I’m approaching my 17th year with the company, and while I wear many hats, I largely focus on new-business development and strategy execution for key accounts.

For listeners who may be less familiar with PerformCB, we specialize in new-user acquisition on an outcome-based model. What that looks like depends on the brand we’re partnering with. For example, brands such as Fetch Rewards, FanDuel, Cash App, and SoFi come to us to acquire new users for their mobile apps. In other cases, brands like LendingTree, Mutual of Omaha, and McAfee rely on us to drive consumers to their websites or landing pages to complete lead forms or make purchases.

We also do a great deal in the pay-per-call space: brands such as Allstate, Nationwide, and UnitedHealthcare use PerformCB to increase the volume of high-intent, qualified inbound calls. The common thread is that regardless of the outcome—installs, leads, purchases, or calls—we only get paid for the results we deliver.

Even when we’re paid on an install, for instance, we optimize against deeper-funnel metrics that truly matter to the marketer, such as account registrations or first-time deposits. We want to stay lockstep with each client’s most meaningful KPIs when we build and scale their acquisition strategies.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:02.455)
That’s an awesome model and incredibly valuable to your clients. I’m excited to talk about how PerformCB has built its own customer base. Let’s discuss the changes you’ve made in the last year—what you shifted toward and how it’s working.

Lee Aho (02:34.626)
Absolutely. We’ve really elevated new-business development across the organization, and it wasn’t a single change but a series of steps that have compounded over time. A few highlights:

1. Refined ICP. We spent time defining our ideal client profile—who makes the best prospective partner for PerformCB.
   
    
2. Storytelling and pitch revamp. We overhauled our pitch to ensure we’re presenting opportunities in the most impactful way for each brand.
   
    
3. Team restructuring. We created a marketer-development team dedicated to onboarding and accelerating new-client results.
   
    
4. Cross-team collaboration. Sales, marketing, and account teams now deliver a unified message and experience.
   
    
5. Irresistible offer. We developed a can’t-miss pilot proposal in select cases to remove barriers to getting started.
   
    

Collectively, these changes have significantly accelerated new-business growth for what is already a 20-year-old company.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:57.527)
You mentioned seeing huge results. Can you share some of the numbers?

Lee Aho (04:10.572)
We’re just coming off our Q1 board meeting, and the results are exciting:

• Launch value: The value of new-business launches in Q1 2025 is up 1,000% versus Q1 2024.
  
   
• Conversion rate: Our discovery-call-to-closed-won conversion rate has more than tripled.
  
   

Because we’re paid on performance, that growth also means our clients are gaining many more high-quality customers.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:40.974)
Let’s dig into the cross-functional alignment between sales, marketing, and customer success that enabled this growth.

Lee Aho (06:21.558)
Several teams play critical roles:

1. Revenue operations & market research. These teams analyzed past launches to identify patterns—why some clients scaled quickly and why others struggled. This informed our refined ICP.
   
    
2. Sales. With a crystal-clear ICP, sales targets accounts that fit our success patterns.
   
    
3. Marketer-development team. Previously, new accounts were handed directly to our account-growth team, whose portfolios were already full. The marketer-development team now focuses solely on helping new clients ramp quickly, ensuring they see results from day one.
   
    
4. Marketing. We’ve added people-based and account-based tactics to reach strategic stakeholders with PerformCB messaging. We can measurably tie many opportunities to these ABM efforts.
   
    

Together, these teams have transformed our onboarding process and customer experience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:52.885)
I love how you applied B2B SaaS best practices to a services organization. Talk more about how you use that customer insight in outbound and pitch messaging.

Lee Aho (08:40.814)
Once we nailed down the ICP, we revamped outbound messaging to be vertical-, competitor-, and channel-specific. We heavily leverage social proof—showing prospective clients exactly how we drive net-new customers for similar brands.

We also adopted technology to automate personalized cadences, allowing more consistent, multi-channel outreach (email, LinkedIn, even in-person visits). And we standardized our pitch deck so every seller tells the strongest, most consistent story.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:49.24)
Many services firms say, “We’ll sell to anyone.” Your focus is very different. How do you ensure your research team targets only the best-fit prospects?

Lee Aho (16:22.754)
We created clear, data-backed criteria. For example, a free mobile app in our ICP must have:

• An MMP or tracking solution so we can tie installs to deeper-funnel events.
  
   
• A minimum volume (e.g., 15 K+ installs per month).
  
   
• Presence in geos where we excel at traffic acquisition.
  
   

We’ve done the same for web and pay-per-call. Everyone in the company knows what “ideal” looks like.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:09.449)
If a listener wants to adopt your approach, where should they start?

Lee Aho (18:43.948)
First, conduct honest self-reflection: which partnerships succeeded, and why? Which struggled? That helps define your ICP.

Then refine outbound messaging with vertical-specific proof points, supported by tech that keeps outreach personal and persistent.

Next, focus on onboarding—whether that’s a marketer-development team or another white-glove process—to ensure early wins.

Finally, consider a “can’t-lose” pilot offer. We sometimes provide a funded test with the agreement that, once we exceed KPIs, it rolls into a paid program. It removes friction and proves our value fast.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:56.383)
Great advice. Any last tips?

Lee Aho (21:20.558)
Be intentional at every step—outreach, pitch, onboarding, and delivery. Ensure every team member conveys the same value proposition and differentiators. Consistency and clarity drive trust and, ultimately, growth.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:09.447)
How can people connect with you or learn more about PerformCB?

Lee Aho (22:13.198)
If you’re a sales leader looking to share ideas—or a marketer seeking smarter, safer, large-scale user acquisition—reach out. Email me at lee@performcb.com or message me on LinkedIn (mention the podcast for a quick reply).

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:49.715)
Fantastic. Thanks so much, Lee—this was packed with actionable insights.

Lee Aho (22:57.011)
Thank you, Kerry. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.
If this episode helped you rethink how your agency or services team approaches growth, share it with a colleague who’s ready to get more strategic. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review if you’re finding value in the show.

To learn more about how we help agencies adopt revenue-focused go-to-market strategies, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine. I’m your host, Kerry Curran: revenue growth obsessed, go-to-market expert, and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer experience to unpack the real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth.

If you like what you hear, please be sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform—it helps us reach more leaders like you.

In this episode of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, titled Beyond ABM Platforms: How Predictive ICP and GTM Alignment Drive Revenue Results I sit down with Kristina Jaramillo, President of Personal ABM, to dive deep into the real meaning of an account-based go-to-market strategy (GTM) and why tech platforms alone won't fix your revenue challenges.

Today’s episode is for any GTM leader who’s struggling to convert good pipeline into real revenue. And If you’re looking to move your target audience up stream to enterprise level deals, Kristina brings the insight you didn’t know you were missing.

Stay tuned until the end of the episode for her playbook on how to grow and retain key accounts before renewal is even on the calendar. Let’s go!

Kerry Curran (00:01.326)
Welcome, Kristina. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Kristina Jaramillo (00:07.164)
Sure. My name is Kristina Jaramillo. I'm the President of Personal ABM. We are an account-based go-to-market team, which means we help B2B teams go to market as one and address revenue challenges—whether that's reducing churn, increasing ACV, shortening sales cycles, or impacting revenue in other ways.

Our KPIs align closely with customer success and sales—we’re all about revenue. We focus on improving the account experiences delivered through content and messaging, and we make sure everyone who is customer- or prospect-facing is aligned and delivering a consistent, differentiated experience. That’s who we are in a nutshell.

Kerry Curran (01:11.726)
Excellent—all extremely critical to driving growth, as you mentioned. I know you speak with a lot of executives and CMOs. What are some common themes and challenges you’re hearing when it comes to better customer acquisition and growth strategies?

Kristina Jaramillo (01:33.564)
When companies come to us, they’ve often adopted ABM—but their definition of it is limited. Sometimes they think ABM is just marketing, or just using an ABM tech platform, or simply layering in intent data. But they haven’t figured out how to improve account experiences or truly evolve their go-to-market motion.

When I talk with clients, I ask: “What’s the biggest red flag in your revenue process? What’s broken?” We start there before trying to solve everything at once. For example, some will say, “We have plenty of pipeline, but prospects go dark or don’t progress.” That points to stage progression or re-engagement issues.

The misconception is that ABM is just a marketing strategy—or just a better targeting tool. In that case, you're still doing demand gen, just more targeted. It hasn’t evolved into a truly account-based approach.

Kerry Curran (03:06.158)
Absolutely. I’ve seen that too—especially when companies say they hired more salespeople, or brought in a new intent platform like Demandbase or 6sense, and think that’s their strategy. Talk about why those platforms are helpful but not the whole solution.

Kristina Jaramillo (03:50.332)
Exactly. A lot of teams were just throwing money at the problem, hoping it would fix things. They’d buy Demandbase, 6sense, or even multiple platforms. But the issue is, they retrofitted an account-based process on top of what they were already doing.

They didn’t change their content or messaging to support the program, so it couldn’t effectively engage, nurture, or close those ICP accounts. Nor did they enable sales or customer success with what they needed. A key problem with content is it needs to teach for differentiation—not just against competitors, but against the status quo.

Buyers are overwhelmed with information. If you don’t show that the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of switching, they’ll do nothing. And with these platforms, you’re defining a segment—not necessarily your true ICP. They may help you identify a total relevant market using basic firmographics, but they don’t tell you if the account is actually ready for your solution.

Kerry Curran (06:07.905)
Right. And even if they say they’re ready, are they truly mature enough to adopt your solution?

Kristina Jaramillo (06:11.898)
Exactly. And even if they say they are, the internal readiness may not be there. Another key issue: intent data is speculative. It’s time-lagged. It doesn’t necessarily mean an account is aligned with you strategically, operationally, or executionally.

Marketing teams also often don’t think about the full account experience—how to move an account to revenue. They aren’t enabling sales or customer success to guide the journey. You need to ensure everyone—marketing, sales, CS—is driving toward revenue KPIs like win rates, stage progression, and expansion. And that they’re delivering a unified, consistent value narrative across the buyer and customer journey.

Kerry Curran (07:09.986)
Exactly—it’s a holistic strategy. Let’s dig into ICP. You’ve talked about predictive ICPs and the need to evolve them. Why is that so important?

Kristina Jaramillo (07:49.852)
Your ICP can’t be static. Many teams define it once, put it in a slide deck, and leave it there. But your offerings change, your customers evolve, the market shifts. It should be reviewed at least annually—ideally twice a year.

Without that clarity, sales wastes months targeting the wrong accounts. You onboard clients who churn because they were never a good fit. Your messaging gets too broad—it speaks to everyone and no one. And you can’t tell situational stories because you’re spread too thin across industries and segments.

Without tight ICP alignment, deals are smaller, more price-sensitive, and longer to close—if they close at all. You’re not set up to identify and nurture accounts that can grow with you over time.

Kerry Curran (10:40.974)
Yes—and I hear from many companies wanting to move up-market to enterprise. But you can’t just “decide” to go enterprise. What does it take?

Kristina Jaramillo (11:21.69)
When targeting enterprise, everything changes. Your ICP needs redefining. You’ll need to expand buyer personas—there are more stakeholders. You need new content and use cases that align with enterprise priorities.

Sales teams need to be equipped for a new conversation, not just repurpose what worked for SMBs. And you need enterprise-level stories to show credibility. It’s a different approach—and a longer sales cycle. Demand gen must bring in the right accounts, not just big names. And marketing must help influence the internal conversations you’re not part of.

Kerry Curran (13:50.964)
Right, and that content strategy must keep them engaged throughout a long cycle—sometimes years. What does that content look like?

Kristina Jaramillo (14:15.462)
It’s all about reframing the conversation around strategic business problems, not just tactical pain points. For example, we worked with a facility management company whose content was about “missed cleanings” and “multiple vendors.” That’s not strategic.

But when we learned their customers had experienced regulatory shutdowns, product recalls, and delayed shipments to clients like Walmart—that impacted the P&L. That’s a strategic priority. Suddenly, we’re talking about protecting revenue, supply chains, and customer trust—not just cleaning floors.

Kerry Curran (18:06.83)
That’s such a strong example. And it ties into how content can support expansion and retention, too. How are you helping clients with that?

Kristina Jaramillo (19:19.664)
For expansion, we align marketing, sales, and CS—not just one team. We shift from, “Here’s what we’ve done,” to, “Here’s where we can grow together.” We help teams have a strong POV on their client’s business and tailor the value story accordingly.

We also make sure CS teams engage with decision-makers—not just day-to-day users. You can’t wait until 30 days before renewal. They need to constantly see and understand the value you deliver. That way, you’re never at risk when budget cuts come around.

And we continue teaching for differentiation—even post-sale. Show them why switching to another vendor, or going back to status quo, is actually more costly.

Kerry Curran (23:51.804)
That’s so important. And you brought up a key risk—when a decision-maker leaves. How can companies prevent that from killing the relationship?

Kristina Jaramillo (24:51.588)
You have to stay close. Your champion should alert you when a leadership change happens. You need to know the new boss’s goals, why they were hired, and what success looks like for them—quickly. Ideally, you're already engaged before the dust settles, coming to the table with insights and alignment.

Waiting too long is a mistake I’ve seen too often—and suddenly you’re cut during a contract consolidation.

Kerry Curran (26:19.248)
For companies hearing this and realizing they need to rethink their strategy—where do they start?

Kristina Jaramillo (26:19.248)
No matter where you are in your ABM journey, step back and ask: What revenue problem are we trying to solve?

Is it pipeline? Stage progression? Churn? Solve for that first. Don’t adopt ABM because it’s trendy. And don’t overcommit before getting buy-in or seeing traction.

Some teams invest in a six-figure tech platform but only use it for better-targeted demand gen. That’s not strategic ABM. Start small, solve a real revenue problem, and expand from there. Then you can layer in whether a one-to-one, one-to-few, or hybrid model makes sense.

Kerry Curran (28:15.202)
Yes—otherwise, it’s just another expensive experiment. Kristina, this has been so insightful. How can people connect with you?

Kristina Jaramillo (28:40.284)
The best way is on LinkedIn—I’m very active there. You can also visit our website at personalabm.com. We offer webinars, articles, and our own podcast, ABM Done Right. Feel free to reach out anytime.

Kerry Curran (29:05.6)
Perfect. And what’s the name of your podcast again?

Kristina Jaramillo (29:09.478)
ABM Done Right.

Kerry Curran (29:12.534)
Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise. This has been incredibly actionable and valuable.

Kristina Jaramillo (29:23.206)
Thank you so much—I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this episode sparked ideas or helped you rethink your growth strategy, share it with a colleague who’s ready to scale smarter.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review if you’re finding value in the show.

To learn more about how we help B2B teams apply smarter GTM strategies, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com.

Until next time—go to market smarter, align your teams, and win with purpose.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine.

I’m your host, Kerry Curran—revenue-obsessed go-to-market expert and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer experience to unpack real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth.

If you like what you hear, please follow and review the podcast on your favorite platform—it helps us reach more leaders like you.

Today’s episode tackles one of the silent killers of go-to-market success: collaboration drag.

Matt Heinz, longtime CMO and industry expert, joins me to break down how aligning your processes, tech stack, and roles can radically improve pipeline creation and team productivity—especially as AI becomes part of your execution layer.

Stick around until the end, where Matt shares his top diagnostic questions to uncover hidden inefficiencies—and how to fix them fast.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran (00:02.144)
Welcome, Matt. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Matt Heinz (00:07.362)
Yeah, thank you, Kerry. My name is Matt Heinz, founder and president of Heinz Marketing. For over 16 years, we’ve helped companies with long, complex sales processes create more predictable pipelines. Too often, companies in that environment rely on random acts of marketing and experience pipeline lumpiness. So we focus on strategy, process, and playbooks—helping sales, marketing, and customer success teams work more closely together to build predictable, repeatable, and scalable pipelines.

Kerry Curran (00:37.066)
Excellent. Thank you, Matt. I know you spend a lot of time talking with CMOs and other executives. What common challenges are you seeing brands struggle with most right now?

Matt Heinz (00:53.806)
Yeah, there’s a lot—the list is long. But the one that comes to mind first is something called collaboration drag. Gartner listed fighting collaboration drag as a top-three CMO priority in 2024, and by 2025, they named it the number one thing CMOs should address. A simple way to understand what I mean is to ask this question:

Matt Heinz (01:23.022)
On average, how many meetings does it take your company to produce a webinar? When I ask that in a room full of marketers, the audible groans are loud. It’s too many meetings, too much back and forth. Even if you run webinars all the time, it feels like you’re reinventing the process every single time. That’s collaboration drag.

Matt Heinz (01:52.812)
Now think about today’s go-to-market motions—multiple channels, steps, buying committee members. We’re asking sales and marketing to work more closely together. We’re asking humans and AI agents to collaborate. It’s a mess. As a result, projects get delayed, agility disappears, and people burn out from inefficient systems.

Matt Heinz (02:22.298)
And as complexity grows—which it will—this issue only becomes more urgent. That’s why Gartner’s focused on it. Solving collaboration drag helps CMOs truly do more with less, which is the new anthem from boards and investors.

Kerry Curran (02:38.688)
Yeah, especially now. Marketers are feeling that pinch—tighter budgets, fewer resources, layoffs—but the pressure to hit business goals hasn’t eased. How do you help your clients identify and close those gaps?

Matt Heinz (02:59.566)
If you have a sales process or buying journey that spans 6, 9, or 12+ months, you're likely running complex plays already. That’s one signal. Another is team size—once you have 15+ marketers, collaboration drag is already setting in. At 20 to 25, the pain is visceral.

We created a Collaboration Drag Diagnostic with four key areas of internal go-to-market orchestration. It’s a maturity model. You look at “good, better, best” descriptions and choose where your team lands. And be honest—CMOs often think they’re better than the team thinks they are. It’s not uncommon for CMOs to say, “We’re good,” and their team replies, “We’re drowning.”

Matt Heinz (03:56.566)
It’s just a one-page tool, but it surfaces the pain quickly. That clarity is step one before you unlock agility, faster execution, and happier employees.

Kerry Curran (04:21.248)
So walk us through those four areas of maturity.

Matt Heinz (04:27.468)
Sure.

1. Collaboration & Communication: What channels are used? What meetings happen? What rhythms do teams follow? Just documenting those gives you a baseline to optimize.
   
    
2. Roles & Processes: Who’s doing what? Without clarity, politics creep in. You get too many people involved just to be involved. RACI or DACI frameworks are great tools here.
   
    
3. Project Management Tools: What tech are you using to manage the work? Buying another tool like Asana or Monday.com won’t help unless your process is baked into it.
   
    
4. Strategy to Execution Motion: How do you turn ideas into outputs? How do you stay agile without blowing up the system every time something new comes along?
   
    

Kerry Curran (05:07.776)
And swim lanes come into play there too, right?

Matt Heinz (05:12.568)
Absolutely. When people know their swim lanes, you have fewer people in meetings, faster decisions, and clearer ownership. Most people don’t want more meetings—they’ll thank you for taking things off their plate.

Kerry Curran (05:44.354)
Yes—fewer meetings and less late-night scrambling. So after the assessment, how do you help teams implement these changes?

Matt Heinz (08:50.798)
We document the current workflows—which are often tribal knowledge—and then build out optimized versions. That includes roles, success metrics, planning tools, and how to use project management software.

Once that’s done, we build a taxonomy: definitions, responsibilities, who's involved, etc. It becomes a living, breathing document. The real magic happens when we do hands-on coaching. We’ll take something like a webinar and walk the team through execution using the new system.

Because you can’t just hand people a playbook and hope they follow it—you have to help them adopt and refine it in their own context.

Kerry Curran (11:35.018)
And how do you help with resistance? People clinging to “the way we’ve always done it”?

Matt Heinz (11:48.482)
Start with the why: If everything feels like a fire drill, something’s broken. People are sick of scrambling. They want structure, not chaos.

And I’ll be honest—this process adds work upfront. You still have to keep the plane flying while building a better engine. But if you don’t make time for this, things will never improve. One CMO just told me their team’s job satisfaction rose 60% after going through this. They’re doing more with less and they’re happier.

Kerry Curran (13:48.842)
That’s huge. Let’s talk AI. How are you incorporating it into these workflows?

Matt Heinz (14:04.012)
A year ago, AI was just a tool for copywriting. Now, companies are building AI agents into org charts. Instead of org charts, think accountability charts—what tasks can AI own? It’s part of the orchestration.

From lead management to content development, AI agents are being embedded across the stack. But they’re not free. One client spends $5K/month, which replaces the need to hire multiple team members.

Kerry Curran (16:01.536)
Is that built in-house or third-party?

Matt Heinz (16:13.102)
It’s a mix. Some are custom-built. Others are part of existing systems. For example, Salesforce’s Agent Force is already there—if you’re not using it, you’re missing out.

Kerry Curran (16:44.864)
So how should someone get started?

Matt Heinz (16:57.25)
Start with the Collaboration Drag Audit—it’s free on our website. You can do it yourself or we can guide you through it. It’ll help you assess your maturity and spark internal conversations around what's broken.

Kerry Curran (17:39.022)
Any quick questions people can ask their teams?

Matt Heinz (17:39.022)
Yep:

• How many meetings does it take to launch a webinar?
  
   
• Are we using our project management tools effectively?
  
   
• How many of your meetings are truly useful or could be async?
  
   
• Are the same unnecessary steps dragging every process out?
  
   

Matt Heinz (19:01.996)
If someone’s just on their laptop the whole meeting, they probably don’t need to be there. Let’s call that out. Use RACI to clarify who really needs to attend.

Imagine a culture where you say: If you don’t have something to say in this meeting, you’re not expected to show up. That’s what we’ve created with our 90-minute leadership meeting. Some weeks we’re done in 38 minutes because we follow the format and only include those who are essential. The rest can just read the AI-powered notes later.

Kerry Curran (21:10.05)
So smart. For those listening, where can they learn more?

Matt Heinz (21:24.046)
HeinzMarketing.com—like the ketchup. Just search “marketing orchestration” or “collaboration drag” on our site. Tons of free content, including the audit. You can also email me directly at matt@heinzmarketing.com. I do respond.

Kerry Curran (21:59.426)
And you’ve got a podcast too?

Matt Heinz (22:02.53)
Yes, Sales Pipeline Radio. We’ve been running it for 8 years. We talk about go-to-market strategies, sales, marketing, even the realities of entrepreneurship.

Kerry Curran (22:23.746)
And I met you through CMO Coffee Talk, which has been invaluable. Can you share a bit about it?

Matt Heinz (22:36.182)
Sure. It started as in-person breakfasts, moved online during the pandemic, and now has 3,500+ CMOs and heads of marketing. No pitching, no recordings. Just real, honest conversation every Friday morning. We cover everything—collaboration drag, imposter syndrome, sales alignment, even exit negotiations.

Kerry Curran (23:23.924)
Yes, the caliber and honesty of that group are incredible. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today—this was packed with value.

Matt Heinz (23:32.078)
Thank you, Kerry.

Matt Heinz (23:37.486)
Awesome. Thanks again.

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this episode helped you identify areas to optimize your go-to-market engine, share it with a colleague who’s stuck in the same cycle. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review if you're enjoying the show.

If you're ready to accelerate revenue by aligning marketing, sales, and customer success, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to learn how we help teams move faster and smarter.

Until next time, keep driving growth—one optimized go-to-market motion at a time. We'll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast—the show where growth-minded business leaders learn how to turn marketing into a measurable revenue engine.

I’m your host, Kerry Curran: revenue growth–obsessed, go-to-market expert, and industry analyst. Each week, I sit down with the brightest minds in marketing, sales, and customer experience to unpack the real-world strategies that drive sustainable growth.

If you like what you hear, please be sure to follow, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform—it helps us reach more leaders like you.

Today’s episode is packed with practical advice on how to bring AI into your marketing organization without the overwhelm. Pam Borges shares her approach to team-based AI training, the real blockers CMOs face, and how to shift from chaos to confidence.

Whether you're just beginning to explore tools or are ready to scale adoption, this conversation is your strategic edge.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Pam shares a powerful tip for turning AI skeptics into super users—especially your strongest writers.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran (00:01.452)
Welcome, Pam. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Pam Boiros (00:06.870)
Hi, Kerry—so happy to join you today. My name is Pam Boiros, and I’m a Boston-based fractional CMO, consultant, and advisor. My background is in B2B tech, particularly HR technology. I run my own firm, Bridge Marketing Advisors, and I’ve moved in and out of in-house CMO roles and fractional work.

My early career was in publishing (which we might get into later), and I’ve spent time at Skillsoft, meQuilibrium, and other companies in the space. I’ve tried to ride the wave of every tech innovation since 2000—from mobile and social to, certainly now, AI.

Kerry Curran (00:53.486)
Definitely—the rapid evolution of marketing technology keeps things exciting. You talk with a lot of CMOs and business leaders. What themes or challenges are you hearing?

Pam Boiros (01:24.034)
Many CMOs feel like deer in headlights when it comes to AI. They’re squeezed in the middle: CEOs, boards, and investors read AI headlines and ask, “Can’t you cut your budget—or your team—in half and do twice as much?” Meanwhile, their teams send mixed signals: AI enthusiasts experiment with every tool, while some colleagues keep their heads in the sand.

It’s hard to keep up with all the news and tools in a demanding CMO role. I recently had a CMO friend say, “At 4:45 last Friday, after putting out all my fires, I decided to learn AI.” You really do need dedicated time and mind-share to get familiar with these tools.

Kerry Curran (03:04.854)
I agree. How did you first lean into AI?

Pam Boiros (03:47.918)
Everyone has a ChatGPT moment. Mine was at a work event at the end of 2022. A colleague mentioned “this ChatGPT thing,” and on the T ride home I tried it. My mind was blown. It reminded me of 1995—the first time I saw a webpage.

Back then, I worked for a print-book publisher. One day we got a letter from a company called Amazon.com claiming it would be the world’s biggest bookstore. I thought, “That’s a dumb idea.” Of course, that letter should have put me on a plane to Seattle!

That memory stuck with me. Since then, I’ve vowed never to miss a tech revolution. I dove into AI newsletters, podcasts, and local Boston events. I took an MIT course and played with every tool I could find.

Kerry Curran (04:43.022)
And what challenges do CMOs face as they get started?

Pam Boiros (05:52.950)
I see lots of “random acts of AI.” Pilots are fine, but soon you need a strategy—and you need to close the gap between AI enthusiasts and AI-averse teammates. Everyone needs a baseline AI literacy.

In my upskilling program, we start with mindset. AI stirs unique emotions—Is it cheating? Will it replace me?—especially among writers. But writers often become the best prompt engineers; they understand nuance and see their writing improve with AI.

Kerry Curran (09:45.494)
Give us a few prompt-engineering tips for non-writers.

Pam Boiros (10:22.399)
Be specific—treat AI like a very smart five-year-old intern. Define its role, give context, and state clear instructions. After the first output, refine: “Simplify this,” or “Write at a sixth-grade level.” Avoid negative instructions (“don’t do X”); rephrase them positively. And never publish raw AI output—always edit in a doc first.

Kerry Curran (11:47.040)
What about data protection and brand voice?

Pam Boiros (11:52.950)
Marketers need three things from a gen-AI tool:

1. Data security—no leaking customer or product data.
   
    
2. Low hallucination risk.
   
    
3. Brand voice control.
   
    

I use CustomGPT.ai—a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) model. Your data stays in a secure “Lego block” on top of the foundation model. You can upload style guides (“We call customers ‘clients,’ employees ‘associates’”) and create separate agents for competitive analysis, content creation, product launches, etc. That boosts first-draft usability from ~40% to ~80%.

Kerry Curran (13:32.846)
How should marketers integrate AI across the tech stack?

Pam Boiros (14:45.835)
Start with your core platforms. Many (HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce) now bundle AI features. Push your vendors: ask hard questions about real benefits. Next, explore their certified partner ecosystems. For new tools, go month-to-month until you see ROI—avoid getting locked into annual contracts too early.

Kerry Curran (17:36.098)
Great advice. Any final steps for teams ready to dive in?

Pam Boiros (17:58.871)

1. Acknowledge you feel behind—and start anyway.
   
    
2. Consume content (newsletters, podcasts, local events) to build literacy.
   
    
3. Assess mindset—identify enthusiasm vs. fear on your team.
   
    
4. Catalog use cases and pilot together.
   
    
5. Automate the dull work to unleash creativity—AI isn’t cheating; it’s a tool.
   
    

Kerry Curran (24:38.714)
Where can listeners find you?

Pam Boiros (28:52.395)
Connect with me on LinkedIn (I’m the only Pam Boiros) or visit BridgeMarketingAdvisors.com. If you’d like to see demos of CustomGPT.ai or discuss upskilling, reach out—I’d love to chat.

Kerry Curran (29:31.594)
Thank you, Pam—this was incredibly helpful.

Pam Boiros (29:39.489)
Thanks, Kerry!

Thanks for listening to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If this conversation helped shift your perspective or sparked a new idea, do us a favor and share it with a colleague who’s navigating similar challenges.

Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen—so you never miss an episode.

And if you're ready to align your marketing with real revenue impact, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to learn how we help B2B teams grow smarter and faster.

Until next time, keep driving growth—one smart strategy at a time.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran, Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. So if you're serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of the competition.

In Beyond Google and Meta: The Future of Search, Media, and Customer Behavior, we’re joined by Megan Conahan, EVP at Direct Agents.

We unpack why clinging to traditional platforms is costing you growth—and how to reach today’s real decision-makers. If you're still building your strategy around yesterday's search behavior, you're missing where buyers actually spend their time.

From TikTok and Reddit to Roblox and CTV, Megan breaks down what’s really driving growth—and how outdated attribution models are holding brands back.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Megan shares her six key predictions for the second half of 2025—and how to get started testing into new, emerging channels.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.885)

Welcome, Megan. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Megan Conahan (00:07.502)
Sure. Hey, Kerry—good to see you again. Hi, everyone. I’m Megan Conahan, Executive Vice President at Direct Agents, a digital marketing agency based in New York and LA. My background is in performance marketing; I’ve been in the space for nearly 20 years, helping both B2B and B2C brands navigate traditional digital channels and the emerging landscape. I also publish a monthly newsletter, The Monthly Marketing Memo, where I cover emerging trends and news to keep everyone up to date in this crazy world we live in.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:43.527)
Thank you. We’re excited to have you here. Twenty years in digital marketing is a lifetime, and the space has evolved so rapidly. What are you hearing from your clients and prospects today—what’s buzzing?

Megan Conahan (01:08.302)
Like you, I talk to brands of all sizes and verticals every day. One thing I still hear—and it concerns me—is how reliant we remain on Google and Meta. Despite massive shifts in consumer behavior, many brands still operate like it’s five years ago.

Think about this: Over 60% of Gen Z now relies on TikTok as a search engine, 46 million daily searches happen on Reddit, and 62% of Gen Z and millennials say they prefer visual search to text-based search. Yet when brands describe their “search strategy,” they usually mean “Google strategy.”

This isn’t just a B2C issue—it may be more pronounced in B2B. Seventy-one percent of B2B decision-makers are digital natives, and nearly 70% say they use TikTok to research products and services. But when did you last see a B2B brand invest meaningfully in TikTok?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:02.698)
I agree. Consumer behavior evolves so fast. Why haven’t brands kept pace? Is it simply comfort with the tried-and-true, fear of the unknown, or something else?

Megan Conahan (03:56.066)
It’s a mix of comfort, fear, and overwhelming complexity. Marketers are strapped for time and resources. When budgets get cut, leadership demands attributable results—so brands stick with channels that show clear ROI. Google and Meta become the safe bets, even if they no longer reflect how audiences behave.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:53.432)
And boards often still see marketing as a cost center, not a strategic investment. That mindset can stifle innovation.

Megan Conahan (05:40.876)
Exactly. Many CFOs still cut marketing first. When that happens, marketers double down on lower-funnel, easily attributable channels—ignoring where demand is truly created. That limits growth and ignores consumer behavior on platforms like TikTok, Reddit, or visual search.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:54.099)
Yes, it’s limiting. Beyond budget pressure, what other challenges do marketers face?

Megan Conahan (07:47.852)
Three big ones:

1. Doing more with less—budget constraints drive risk-averse channel choices.
   
    
2. Measurement—many brands rely on last-click attribution and don’t know which channels truly drive incremental growth. Media-mix modeling is underused.
   
    
3. Capturing demand beyond Google—finding and engaging audiences on TikTok, Reddit, visual search, and AI chatbots is hard and time-consuming, so brands avoid it.
   
    

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:20.465)
I see it in my own behavior: voice search, long-tail queries, visual search. Agencies can help brands navigate this complexity. How are you seeing agencies add value now?

Megan Conahan (11:07.756)
A few years ago, in-housing might have made sense. Today, the media landscape is too complex. Agencies provide cross-channel expertise, advanced measurement, and strategic guidance. AI automates some execution, but strategy matters more than ever. A strong agency partnership can save brands time, money, and missed opportunities.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:25.457)
What should brands prioritize when tackling this complex landscape?

Megan Conahan (13:11.648)
Get back to basics: show up in the right place, at the right time, with the right message. Reassess where your audience actually spends time, then tailor creative and targeting per platform. Someone searching on Google behaves differently from someone on Reddit or TikTok. Match tone, keywords, and assets to each environment—or risk alienating users.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:38.471)
You mentioned an innovative Shopify–Roblox integration. Tell us more.

Megan Conahan (15:11.648)
If you’re a Gen Z brand, you must consider gaming. Ninety percent of new digital buyers by 2028 will be Gen Z, and they spend two hours daily in Roblox—more than on TikTok. Shopify’s new integration lets brands sell products directly in Roblox. Roblox also partnered with Google, so you can buy Roblox ads through Google Ads. Brands should test this before the platform gets saturated.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:25.457)
Great example. What are your top predictions for the next year?

Megan Conahan (22:45.454)

1. Search as we know it will decline—fragmented, semantic, visual, and cross-platform search will dominate.
   
    
2. Virtual worlds are the new frontier—gaming platforms like Roblox will be essential for Gen Z.
   
    
3. CTV becomes a performance hub—better attribution and retail-media data make CTV critical.
   
    
4. Social feeds + stores = the next retail-media wave—retailers will extend off-site with first-party data.
   
    
5. B2B marketing goes full B2C—fun, human, influencer-driven creative will replace jargon.
   
    
6. Media-mix modeling unlocks growth—brands must move beyond platform attribution.
   
    

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:49.957)
If listeners want to innovate and test new channels, where should they start?

Megan Conahan (26:25.100)
Identify gaps in your knowledge. Map where your audience spends time. Rank opportunities by ease and impact, and start with low-hanging fruit. And consider partnering with an agency for strategy—even if you keep execution in-house.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:20.303)
How can people reach you?

Megan Conahan (27:27.148)
Email me at megan@directagents.com, connect on LinkedIn, or subscribe to The Monthly Marketing Memo. I love talking shop and helping marketers innovate.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:55.097)
Fantastic. We’ll include those links in the show notes. Thanks for joining us, Megan—this was timely and valuable!

Megan Conahan (28:08.034)
Great talking to you, Kerry. Thanks so much for having me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:11.891)
Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked some new ideas and challenged the way you think about your paid media mix and testing emerging channels. If you're serious about turning marketing into a true revenue driver, this is just the beginning. We've got more insightful conversations, expert guests, and actionable strategies coming your way. So search for us in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe.

And hey, if this episode gave you value, share it with a colleague or leave a quick review. It helps more revenue-minded leaders like you find our show. If you're an agency, MarTech, or AdTech brand that sells to marketers, give me a shout to talk about affordable and effective sponsorship opportunities. My top episodes are generating close to 30,000 downloads.

Until next time, I'm Kerry Curran—helping you connect marketing to growth, one episode at a time. We'll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran—Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you’re serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of your competition.

In Marketing Impact Unlocked: Prove, Scale, and Strengthen Revenue Contribution, we’re unlocking marketing impact with Leslie Alore, SVP of Marketing at Flexera.

If you’re tired of defending MQLs and want to start proving real business value, this episode is for you. Leslie breaks down how to align marketing with what your executive team actually cares about—pipeline, bookings, and growth.

You’ll learn how to build a contribution model, earn executive trust, and scale marketing’s influence across the full customer lifecycle.

Stay tuned until the end, where Leslie shares how to flip the script—from proving marketing’s value to collaborating on shared outcomes.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.553)
Welcome, Leslie. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Leslie Alore (00:08.065)
Hi, Kerry—thank you for having me. I’m Leslie Alore, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Flexera, a B2B SaaS company offering IT and FinOps solutions. Before Flexera, I held growth marketing, lifecycle marketing, and marketing-operations roles at organizations in the private-equity space—like Ivanti—and in the public space, such as Iron Mountain.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:37.209)
Excellent—welcome. We’re excited to have you here. I first met you at B2B MX in Arizona earlier this year, where your presentation on marketing measurement and alignment really resonated. I learned so much and knew it would make a great podcast topic.

You’re deep in B2B marketing and often talk with peers about current challenges. What are you seeing as the biggest issues marketers face today?

Leslie Alore (01:42.862)
One challenge is that we’ve trained business leaders to focus on marketing terms like MQLs, SQLs, and conversion rates—metrics that don’t directly connect to business outcomes. That disconnect makes marketing look separate from driving real impact, even though we’re a commercial, go-to-market function working alongside sales and customer success.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:34.790)
So, how can we improve that connection? Where are the gaps?

Leslie Alore (02:51.246)
First, we need to change the way we talk. Discussions about web traffic and MQLs belong in the marketing room. When speaking with business leadership, we should focus on pipeline, bookings, revenue, and smart financial investments—rather than only ROI. Up-leveling the conversation helps everyone see marketing’s impact.

We also have to explain how marketing drives those outcomes. It’s not always a pull-a-lever, dollar-in/dollar-out scenario—it’s nuanced, and that nuance matters.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:11.696)
Definitely. The shift from tactic-centric marketing to growth-centric marketing is big—especially now that buying behavior and investment climates have changed. Complex, long-cycle solutions versus transactional ones vary widely. How do you approach measuring brand initiatives or upper-funnel efforts that feel less direct?

Leslie Alore (05:07.822)
Sellers rarely dismiss brand. They want prospects to know who they represent when they connect.

I start by aligning leadership on marketing’s unique value: 1) driving brand perception, 2) driving recurring-revenue growth (or your key revenue metric), and 3) creating great customer experiences that encourage expansion and retention. Once leaders agree marketing supports all three—at scale—we emphasize partnership, not hand-offs, with sales and CS teams.

Marketing’s job is to provide scale and “air cover” in the moments between one-to-one conversations. That framing resonates.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:38.278)
Let’s dive into your marketing-contribution model and how it aligns teams around those principles.

Leslie Alore (08:54.434)
Rather than fixating on first-touch or last-touch attribution, the contribution model shows how marketing activities—those that engage specific people—create, progress, and close pipeline.

• Contribution to new pipeline: the total value of opportunities whose contacts engaged with marketing within a set look-back period (e.g., 180 days).
  
   
• Contribution to pipeline progression: the value of open opportunities where engaged contacts advance stages.
  
   
• Contribution to bookings: the value of closed-won deals whose contacts engaged with marketing at any point in the cycle.
  
   

You can then slice the data—new logos vs. cross-sell, partner-sourced vs. seller-created—to understand which campaigns influence creation, progression, or closure. It stops credit debates and focuses on how marketing helps sellers win.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:39.238)
Any tips for presenting that data to boards or executives?

Leslie Alore (13:17.304)
Focus on pipeline, bookings, NRR, and GRR—metrics leadership cares about. Behind the scenes, marketers still track campaign-level details, but executives need outcomes. Every marketer should speak that language; it accelerates career growth into CMO or CRO roles.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:28.228)
How do you pick the right look-back window for contribution analysis?

Leslie Alore (15:05.708)
Understand your sales and buying cycles. Complex replacements may require six-plus months; transactional cycles need less. Pick a consistent window—my last three organizations use 180 days—and stick to it. Consistency beats “perfect.”

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:57.178)
Great advice. Beyond pipeline creation, how does contribution vary in different models—enterprise account management, partner-led motions, etc.?

Leslie Alore (17:47.680)
In enterprise account management, sellers know every contact; marketing’s job is air cover and engagement—not sourcing. In partner-led models, marketing drives interest that funnels to partners. Contribution captures that influence, even if marketing isn’t the “source.” That’s good marketing and it must be measured.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:20.816)
For listeners ready to start, what foundational steps and data are required?

Leslie Alore (21:33.806)

1. Align on top-level business metrics (pipeline, bookings, retention).
   
    
2. Map how marketing uniquely supports those outcomes.
   
    
3. Ensure you can track:
   
   
   • Individual campaign respondents.
     
      
   • All contacts on each opportunity.
     Tools like People.ai help automate contact capture; platforms like Full Circle Insights streamline reporting.
     
      

With those links in place, you can report contribution.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:36.550)
Any final advice?

Leslie Alore (23:43.992)
Speak leadership’s language first. Nail the business context, then introduce the measurement model. Consistently connect marketing’s activity to pipeline, bookings, and retention, and you’ll elevate the entire function.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:33.146)
Brilliant. How can listeners find you?

Leslie Alore (24:41.518)
Connect with me on LinkedIn and include a brief note—I’m always happy to discuss marketing contribution and alignment.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:10.086)
Thank you, Leslie—this was incredibly insightful. Talk soon!

Leslie Alore (25:23.554)
Thanks, Kerry.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If today’s episode sparked an idea or gave you something actionable, follow, rate, and review the show—it helps us grow and keep bringing expert strategies to marketers like you.

I’m Kerry Curran, reminding you that real growth happens when marketing leads with purpose and revenue in mind. For more insights, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com. See you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran, Revenue Strategist and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. Each week, I bring you sharp insights and expert strategies to turn marketing into a true growth engine. If you’re focused on results, follow the show and leave a quick rating or review to help more marketers discover the boost they need.

B2B buyers have changed, but too many marketing strategies haven’t. In The New Rules of B2B Marketing: How to Win with Differentiation and Value, Not Volume, I sat down with Tom Shapiro—CEO of Stratabeat and author of Rethink Lead Generation.

Tom and I unpack why the traditional playbook of high-volume tactics no longer works, and what top-performing brands are doing instead.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why meaningful differentiation is your most underused growth lever
  
   
• How deeper ICP research can solve 99% of your marketing challenges
  
   
• The real role of SEO today—and how to align your content, website, and outreach to deliver value, not noise

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Tom shares how to improve your B2B marketing today—without spending a dollar more.

So if you’re ready to stand out in a sea of sameness and drive smarter growth, this episode is for you. Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.539)
So, welcome, Tom. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (00:07.512)
Sure—thanks, Kerry. Great to be here. I’m Tom Shapiro, CEO and founder of Stratabeat, an organic-growth agency for B2B technology and SaaS companies. We provide SEO, content strategy, content development, content marketing, web design, and conversion-optimization services. I’ve been in marketing since 1994—several years before Google existed—and I’ve written several books along the way. My latest is Rethink Lead Generation, which covers the most effective ways to generate leads for maximum results.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:52.195)
Excellent—thanks, Tom. This is your second time on, and you always share great, actionable recommendations, so I’m excited to dive in. In your role you speak with many B2B and SaaS CMOs. What themes or challenges are you hearing from them today?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (01:20.854)
A common theme is that what worked years ago no longer does—the old B2B marketing playbook isn’t as effective. They’re asking how to pivot for success. We see highly effective tactics many companies aren’t leaning into—and one underlying factor that changes everything but is often overlooked.

For example, original research—not as a one-off, but as a series you own quarterly or annually—delivers unique value your competitors can’t touch. Another overlooked tactic is website-visitor identification combined with timely outreach. If you can see your ICP on your site, understand what topics and products they viewed, and reach out within 24 hours, that hyper-personalized approach is incredibly powerful.

Ultimately, success comes from deeply understanding your audience and delivering overwhelming value, not gaming isolated tactics.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:49.732)
Right—the landscape has changed. From roughly 2010–2022, SaaS was driven by huge investment and “spend to acquire,” but market conditions and buyer behavior shifted. Tactics focused solely on tech stacks or hiring more BDRs no longer move the needle.

Given today’s sea of sameness, where many products look alike, how do companies zero in on—and articulate—true differentiation?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (06:03.852)
Many markets are oversaturated. We worked with a $200-million software company; six marketers joined our call, yet none could articulate clear differentiation. Someone finally said, “We’ve been around the longest.” That provides zero customer value—and can even sound like stagnation.

The answer: deeper ICP understanding. When you truly know your audience’s pain points—what keeps them up Sunday night—you can uncover differentiation that resonates. Claiming “we use AI” or “we’re oldest” means nothing without tying it to customer benefit.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:05.986)
Agreed. So how do brands actually gain that deeper ICP insight?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (09:19.030)
Most teams barely scratch the surface—dusty personas on a server aren’t enough. Start by talking regularly with actual customers and sales teams; listen to sales-call recordings monthly at minimum. Review sales decks and gather feedback on how prospects react.

Use your CRM for win–loss analysis, social listening, surveys, and on-site behavioral analysis. We often listen to 20 hours of recorded calls for a new client—gold they’ve never mined.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:51.222)
Great points—social listening, NPS feedback, even Reddit threads can reveal unexpected insights. For websites especially, how do you close the gap between buyer pain points and on-page messaging?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (14:14.210)
Marry sales and marketing via CRM win–loss analysis—weekly if possible. Identify why deals close or stall, then update or create site content to answer those concerns. Your goal: prospects visit your site and immediately feel, “This partner knows my challenges and can solve them.”

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:03.595)
So—is SEO dead?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (16:11.010)
Not at all. Critics point to HubSpot losing 80 % of organic blog traffic—but much of that content was off-topic “famous quotes.” HubSpot’s core pages didn’t dip.

Stratabeat more than doubled organic traffic last year, with record-breaking organic leads in Q1. SEO works when you provide overwhelming value—often through original research that fuels reports, blogs, webinars, and sales conversations.

Studies claiming AI Overviews dominate 60–80 % of searches are generic. In our study of 300 B2B SaaS firms, AI Overviews appeared for just 18 % of their page-one keywords. The top 10 % performers—those doubling or tripling traffic—actually faced more AI Overview competition yet still crushed results. So focus on your own data and audience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:04.363)
Exactly—measure the right KPIs across the full buying cycle. For listeners ready to improve, where should they start?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (22:17.954)
First, deepen ICP insight:

• Meet with sales monthly or quarterly.
  
   
• Listen to sales-call recordings regularly.
  
   
• Conduct CRM win–loss analysis every month.
  
   
• Talk to customers frequently—not annually.
  
   

Second, implement daily website-visitor identification and follow-up. If your ICP visits, reach out within one business day with personalized value. Both initiatives cost little but massively boost results.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:16.085)
Fantastic. How can people find you?

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (25:22.574)
Visit Stratabeat.com, connect with me on LinkedIn, or grab my book Rethink Lead Generation on Amazon.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:45.889)
I’ll include those links in the show notes. Thanks so much, Tom—always great having you here.

Tom Shapiro, Stratabeat (25:55.073)
Thank you, Kerry.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. If today’s episode sparked an idea or gave you something actionable, do me a favor—follow, rate, and review the show. It helps us grow and bring more expert strategies to marketers like you.

I’m Kerry Curran, reminding you that real growth happens when marketing leads with purpose—and with revenue in mind.

For more advice, visit revenuebasedmarketing.com. I hope to see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran—Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast. In every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that deliver real results. So if you're serious about business growth, find us in your favorite podcast directory, hit subscribe, and start outpacing your competition today.

In this episode, titled AI + EQ + GTM: The New Growth Equation for B2B Leaders, I sit down with keynote speaker, author, and enablement powerhouse Roderick Jefferson to unpack the modern formula for revenue growth: AI + EQ + GTM.

We explore why traditional sales enablement isn’t enough in today’s landscape—and how real go-to-market success requires alignment across marketing, sales, and customer success, powered by emotional intelligence and smart technology integration.

Whether you're a CRO, CMO, or GTM leader looking to scale smarter, this episode is packed with real-world insights and actionable strategies to align your teams and drive sustainable growth.

Stick around until the end, where Roderick shares expert tips for building your own AI-powered revenue engine.

If you’re serious about long-term growth, it’s time to get serious about AI, EQ, and GTM. Let’s go.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01)
Welcome, Roderick. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Roderick Jefferson (00:06)
Hey, Kerry. First of all, thanks so much for having me on. I’m really excited—I’ve been looking forward to this one all day. So thanks again. I’m Roderick Jefferson, CEO of Roderick Jefferson & Associates. We’re a fractional enablement company, and we focus on helping small to mid-sized businesses—typically in the $10M to $100M range—that need help with onboarding, ongoing education, and coaching.

I’m also a keynote speaker and an author. I actually started my career in sales at AT&T years ago. I was a BDR, did well, got promoted to AE, made President’s Club a couple of times. Then I was offered a sales leadership role—and I turned it down. I know they thought I was crazy, but there were two reasons: first, I realized I loved the process of selling more than just closing big deals. And second, oddly enough, I wasn’t coin-operated. I did it because I loved it—it gave me a chance to interact with people and have conversations like this one.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:16)
I love that—and I love your background. As Roderick mentioned, he does a lot of keynote speaking, and that’s actually where I met him. He was a keynote speaker at B2BMX West in Scottsdale last month. I also have one of your books here that I’ve been diving into. I can’t believe how fast this year is flying—it’s already the first day of spring!

Roderick Jefferson (01:33)
Thank you so much. Wow, that was just last month? It feels like last week. Where is the time going?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:45)
I appreciate your experience for so many reasons. One is that—like we talked about before the show—my dad was in sales at AT&T for over 20 years. It paid for my entire education. So we were comparing notes on that era of innovation and what we learned back then.

Roderick Jefferson (02:02)
Thank you, AT&T!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:13)
So much of what you talked about on stage and wrote about in your book is near and dear to my heart. My background is in building integrated marketing-to-sales infrastructure and strengthening it to drive revenue growth. I’m excited to hear more about what you’re seeing and hearing. You talk to so many brands and marketers—what’s hot right now? What’s the buzz? What do we need to know?

Roderick Jefferson (02:44)
A couple of things. The obvious one is AI—but I’ll add something: it’s not just AI, it’s AI plus EQ plus IQ. Without that combination, you won’t be successful.

The other big theme is the same old problem we’ve always had: Why is there such a disconnect between sales and marketing? As an enablement guy, it pains me. I spent 30 years in corporate trying to figure that out. I think we’re getting closer to alignment—thank you, AI, for finally stepping in and being smarter than all of us! But we’ve still got a long way to go.

Part of the issue is we’re still making decisions in silos. That’s why I’ve become a champion of moving away from just "sales enablement."

Yes, I know I wrote the book on sales enablement—but I don’t think that’s the focus anymore. In hindsight, “sales enablement” is too myopic. It's really about go-to-market. How do we bring HR, marketing, product marketing, engineering, sales, and enablement all to the same table to talk about the entire buyer’s journey?

Instead of focusing on our internal sales process and trying to shoehorn prospects into it, we should be asking: How do they buy? Who buys? Are there buying committees? How many people are involved? And yes, ICP matters—but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It goes much deeper.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:44)
Yes, absolutely. And going back to why you loved your early sales roles—it was about helping people. That’s how I’ve always approached marketing too: what are their business challenges, and what can I offer to solve them? In your keynote, you said, “I want sales to stop selling and start helping.” But that’s not possible without partnering with marketing to learn and message around the outcomes we drive and the pain points we solve.

Roderick Jefferson (05:22)
Exactly. Let’s unpack that. First, about helping vs. selling—that’s why we have spam filters now. Nobody wants to be sold to. That’s also why people avoid car lots—because you know what’s coming: they’ll talk at you, try to upsell you, and push you into something you don’t need or want. Then you have buyer’s remorse.

Now apply that to corporate and entrepreneurship. If you’re doing all the talking in sales, something’s wrong. Too many people ask questions just to move the deal forward instead of being genuinely inquisitive.

Let’s take it further. If marketing is working in a silo—building messaging and positioning—and they don’t bring in sales, then guess what? Sales won’t use it. Newsflash, right? And second, it’s only going to reflect marketing’s perspective. But if you bring both teams together and say, “Hey, what are the top three to five things you’re hearing from prospects over and over?”—then you can work collaboratively and cohesively to solve those.

The third piece is: let’s stop trying to manufacture pain. Not every prospect is in pain. Sometimes the goal is to increase efficiency or productivity. If there is pain, you get to play doctor for a moment. And by that, I mean: do they need an Advil, a Vicodin, a Percocet, or an extraction? Do you need to stop the bleeding right now? You only figure that out by getting sales, marketing, product, and even HR at the same table.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:34)
Yes, absolutely. I love the analogy of different levels of pain solutions because you’re right—sometimes it’s not pain, it’s about helping the customer be more efficient, reduce costs, or drive revenue. I’ve used the doctor analogy before too: you assess the situation and then customize the solution based on where it “hurts” the most. One of the ongoing challenges, though, is that sales and marketing still aren’t fully aligned. Why do you think that’s been such a persistent issue, and where do you see it heading?

Roderick Jefferson (08:14)
Because sales speaks French and marketing speaks German. They’re close enough that they can kind of understand each other—like ordering a beer or finding a bathroom—but not enough for a meaningful conversation.

The core issue is that they’re not talking—they’re presenting to each other. They're pitching ideas instead of having a dialogue. Marketing says, “Here’s what the pitch should look like,” and sales replies, “When’s the last time you actually talked to a customer?”

They also get stuck in “I think” and “I feel,” and I always tell both groups—those are the two things you cannot say in a joint meeting. No one cares what you think or feel. Instead, say: “Here’s what I’ve seen work,” or “Here’s what I’ve heard from prospects and customers.” That way, the conversation is rooted in data and real-world insight, not opinion or emotion.

You might say, “Hey, when we get to slide six in the deck, things get fuzzy and deals stall.” That’s something marketing can fix. Or you go to product and say, “I’ve talked to 10 prospects, and eight of them asked for this feature. Can we move it up in the roadmap?”

Or go back to sales and say, “Only 28% of the team is hitting quota because they’re struggling with discovery and objection handling.” So enablement and marketing can partner to create role plays, messaging guides, or accreditations. It sounds utopian, but I’ve actually done this six times over 30 years—it is possible.

It’s not because I’m the smartest guy in the room—it’s because when sales and marketing align around shared definitions and shared goals, real change happens. Go back to MQLs and SQLs. One team says, “We gave you all these leads,” and the other says, “Yeah, but they all sucked.” Then you realize: you haven’t even agreed on what a lead is.

As a fractional enablement leader, that’s the first question I ask: “Can you both define what an MQL and SQL mean to you?” Nine times out of ten, they realize they aren’t aligned at all. That’s where real progress starts.

Once you fix communication, the next phase is collaboration. And what comes out of collaboration is the big one: accountability. That’s the word nobody likes—but it’s what gets results. You’re holding each other to timelines, deliverables, and follow-through.

The final phase is orchestration. That’s what enablement really does—we connect communication, collaboration, and accountability across the entire go-to-market team so everyone has a voice and a vote.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:16)
You’re so smart, and you bring up so many great points—especially around MQLs, SQLs, and the lack of collaboration. There’s no unified North Star. Marketing may be focused on MQLs, but those criteria don’t always match what moves an MQL to an SQL.

There’s also no feedback loop. I’ve seen teams where sales and marketing didn’t even talk to each other—but they still complained about each other! I was brought in to help, and I said, “You’re adults. It’s time to talk to one another.” And you’d think that would be obvious.

What I love is that we’re starting to see the outdated framework of MQLs as a KPI begin to fade. As you said, it’s about identifying a shared goal that everyone can be accountable to. We need to all be paddling in the same direction.

Roderick Jefferson (14:16)
Exactly. I wouldn't say we’re all rowing yet, but we’ve definitely got our hands in the water, and we’re starting to go in the same direction. You can see that North Star flickering out there.

And I give big kudos to AI for helping with that. In some ways, it reminds me of social media. Would you agree that social media initially made us less social?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:27)
Yes, totally agree. We can see the North Star.

Roderick Jefferson (14:57)
Now I’m going to flip that idea on its head: if done right, I believe AI will actually make us more human—and drive more meaningful conversations. I know that sounds crazy, but I have six ways AI can help us do that.

First, let’s go back to streamlining lead scoring. If we use AI to prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert, sales can focus efforts on the most promising opportunities. Once we align on those criteria, volume and quality both improve. With confidence comes competence—and vice versa.

Second is automating task management. Whether it’s data entry, appointment scheduling, or follow-up emails, those repetitive tasks eat up sales time. Less than 30% of a rep’s time is spent actually selling. If we offload that admin work, reps can focus on high-value activities—like building relationships, doing discovery, and closing deals.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:59)
Yes! And pre-call planning. Having the time to prepare properly makes a huge difference.

Roderick Jefferson (16:19)
Exactly. Third is real-time analytics. If marketing and ops can provide sales reps with real-time insights—like funnel data, deal velocity, or content performance—we can start making decisions based on data, not assumptions or feelings.

The fourth area is personalized sales coaching. I talk to a lot of leaders, and I’ll make a bold statement: most sales leaders don’t know how to coach. They either use outdated methods or try to “peanut butter” their advice across the team.

But what if we could use AI to analyze calls, emails, and meetings—then provide coaching based on each rep’s strengths and weaknesses? Sales leaders could shift from managing to leading.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:55)
Yes, I love that. It would completely elevate team performance.

Roderick Jefferson (18:11)
Exactly. Fifth is increasing efficiency in the sales process. AI can create proposals, contracts, and other documents, which frees up time for reps to focus on helping—not chasing paperwork. And by streamlining the process, we can qualify faster and avoid wasting time on poor-fit deals.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:58)
Right, and they can focus on the deals that are actually likely to move forward.

Roderick Jefferson (19:09)
Exactly. And sixth—and most overlooked—is customer success. That’s often left out of GTM conversations, but it’s critical. We can use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to handle basic inquiries. That frees up CSMs to focus on more strategic tasks like renewals, cross-sell, and upsell.

Let’s be honest—most CSMs were trained for renewals, not selling. But cross-sell and upsell aren’t really selling—they’re reselling to warm, happy customers. The better trained and equipped CSMs are, the better your customer retention and growth.

Because let’s face it—we’ve all seen it: 90 days before renewal, suddenly a CSM becomes your best friend. Where were they for the last two years? If we get ahead of that and connect all the dots—sales, marketing, CS, and product—guess who wins?

• The prospect.
• The customer.
• The company—because revenue goes up.
• The employee—because bonuses happen, spiffs get paid, and KPIs are hit.

But most importantly, we build customers for life. And that has to start from the very beginning, not just when the CSM steps in at the end.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:47)
Yes, this is so smart. I love that you brought customer success into the conversation. One of the things I love about go-to-market strategy is that it includes lifetime value—upsell and renewal are a critical part of the revenue journey.

In my past roles, I've seen teams say, “Well, that’s just client services—they don’t know how to sell.” But to your point, if we coach them, equip them, and make them comfortable, it can go a long way.

Roderick Jefferson (21:34)
Absolutely. They become the lifeblood of your business. Yes, you need net-new revenue, but if sales builds this big, beautiful house on the front end and then customers just walk out the back door—what’s the point?

And I won’t even get into the stats—you know them—about how much more expensive it is to acquire a new customer versus retaining one. The key is being human and actually helping.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:46)
Exactly. I love that. It leads perfectly into my next question—because one of the core components of your strategy and presentation was the importance of EQ, or emotional intelligence. Can you talk about why that’s so critical?

Roderick Jefferson (22:19)
Yeah. It really comes down to this: AI can provide content—tons of it, endlessly. It can give you all the data and information in the world. But it still requires a human to provide context. For now, at least. I’m not saying it’ll be that way forever, but for now, context is everything.

I love analogies, so I’ll give you one: it’s like making gumbo. You sprinkle in some seasoning here, some spice there. In this case, AI provides the content. Then the human provides the interpretation—context. That’s understanding how to use that generated content to reach the right person or company, at the right time, with the right message, in the right tone.

What you get is a balanced, powerful approach: IQ + EQ + AI. That’s what leads to truly optimal outcomes—if you do it right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:19)
Yes! I love that. And I love every stage of your process, Roderick—it’s so valuable. I know your clients are lucky to work with you.

For people listening and thinking, “Yes, I need this,” how do they get started? What’s the baseline readiness? How do they begin integrating sales and marketing more effectively—and leveraging AI?

Roderick Jefferson (23:34)
Thank you so much for that. It really starts with a conversation. Reach out—LinkedIn, social media, my website. And from there, we talk. We get to the core questions: Where are you today? Where have you been? Where are you trying to go? And most importantly: What does success look like?

And not just, “What does success look like?” but, “Who is success for?”

Then we move into an assessment. I want to talk to every part of the go-to-market team. Because not only do we have French and German—we’ve also got Dutch, Spanish, and every other language. My job is to become the translator—not just of language, but of dialects and context.

“This is what they said, but here’s what they meant. And this is what they meant, but here’s what they actually need.”

Then we dig into what’s really going on. Most clients have a sense of what’s “broken.” I’m not just looking for the broken parts—I’m looking at what you’ve already tried. What worked? What didn’t? Why or why not?

I basically become a persistent four-year-old asking, “Why? But why? But why?” And yes, it gets frustrating—but it’s the only way to build a unified GTM team with a shared North Star.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:32)
Yes, I love that. And just to add—sometimes something didn’t work not because it was a bad strategy, but because it was evaluated with the wrong KPI or misunderstood entirely.

Like a top-of-funnel strategy did work—but the team expected it to generate leads that same month. It takes time. So much of this comes down to digging into the root of the issue, and I love your approach.

Roderick Jefferson (26:10)
Exactly. And it’s also about understanding that every GTM function has different KPIs.

If I’m talking to sales, I’m asking about average deal size, quota attainment, deal velocity, win rate, pipeline generation.

 

If I’m talking to sales engineering, they care about number of demos per deal, wins and losses, and number of POCs.

 

Customer success? They care about adoption, churn, CSAT, NPS, lifetime value.

My job is to set the North Star and speak in their language—not in “enablement-ese.” Sometimes that means speaking in sales terms, sometimes marketing terms. And I always say, “Assume I know nothing about your job. Spell out your acronyms. Define your terms.”

Because over 30 years, I’ve learned: the same acronym can mean 12 different things at 12 different companies.

The goal is to get away from confusion and start finding commonality. When you break down the silos and the masks, you realize we’re all working toward the same thing: new, long-term, happy customers for life.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:55)
Yes—thank you, Roderick. I love this. So, how can people find you?

Roderick Jefferson (28:00)
Funny—I always say if you can’t find me on social media, you’re not trying to find me.You can reach me at roderickjefferson.com, and you can find my book, Sales Enablement 3.0: The Blueprint to Sales Enablement Excellence and the upcoming Sales 3.0 companion workbook there as well.

I’m on LinkedIn as Roderick Jefferson, Instagram and Threads at @roderick_j_associates, YouTube at Roderick Jefferson, and on BlueSky as @voiceofrod.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:33)
Excellent. I’ll make sure to include all of that in the show notes—I’m sure this episode will have your phone ringing!

Thank you so much, Roderick. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. This was valuable for me, and I’m sure for the audience as well.

Roderick Jefferson (28:40)

Ring-a-ling—bring it on! Let’s dance. Thank you again. This was an absolute honor, and I’m glad we got the chance to reconnect, Kerry.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (28:59)
For sure. Thank you—you too.

Roderick Jefferson (29:01)
Take care, all.

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“You don't need more leads—you need clarity. Clarity on where your business can grow the most, the fastest, and at the highest margin. That's what a real go-to-market system delivers. It's not about volume anymore—it's about alignment, focus, and making sure every team—marketing, sales, and customer success—is executing toward the same outcome. That's how CEOs scale with confidence.” That's a quote from Sangram Vajre, and a sneak peek at today's episode.

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Kerry Curran—revenue growth expert, industry analyst, and relentless advocate for turning marketing into a revenue engine. Each episode, we bring you the strategies, insights, and conversations that help drive your revenue growth. So search for Revenue Boost in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe to stay ahead of the game.

In The CEO's Strategic Growth Edge: A Go-to-Market System That Scales, I'm joined by bestselling author and GTM expert Sangram Vajre to discuss why go-to-market isn't a marketing tactic—it's a CEO-level growth system. In this episode, you'll learn the three phases every business must navigate to scale, why alignment beats activity in every growth stage, how CEOs can drive clarity, trust, and margin-focused decisions across teams, and why AI is only a threat if you're still riding the demand-gen horse.

If you're a growth-minded CEO or exec, this episode gives you the roadmap and the mindset to scale faster, smarter, and stronger. Be sure to listen through to the end, where Sangram shares three key tips—his ultimate advice for any leader ready to level up their go-to-market strategy. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:00.77)
So welcome, Sangram. Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Sangram Vajre (00:06.992)
Well, at the highest level, I feel like I’ve had the opportunity to be in the B2B space for the last two decades and have had a front-row seat to categories that have shaped how we think about go-to-market. I ran marketing at Pardot. We were acquired by ExactTarget and then Salesforce—that was a $2.7 billion acquisition. It was a huge shift in mindset, going from a $10 million company to a $10 billion one, and I learned a lot.

I became a student of go-to-market, if you will. That was in the marketing automation space. Then I launched a company called Terminus, which has been acquired twice now. Along the way, I’ve written three books. The one we’re going to talk a lot about is MOVE, which became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. That book has created a lot of opportunities and work for us.

I walked into writing this book, Kerry, thinking I knew go-to-market because I had two $100M+ exits. But I walked out of the process a student of go-to-market because I learned so much. Writing it forced me to talk to folks like Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot, and partners at VC firms who have seen 200 exits—not just the three I’ve experienced.

It really expanded my vision. Now I lead a company called Go-To-Market Partners. We’re a research and advisory firm focused on helping companies understand who owns go-to-market and how to run it at a transformational level. Our clients are primarily CEOs and executive teams. That’s our focus.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:46.094)
Excellent. Well, I'm very excited to dive in. I first saw you speak at Inbound last fall, and what really resonated with me was the shift from just an ABM program to a company-wide GTM program—one that includes everything from problem-market fit all the way to customer success, loyalty, and retention. Really making GTM the core of revenue growth.

So I’d love for you to dive in and share that framework and background.

Sangram Vajre (02:23.224)
Yeah. And by the way, for people who’ve never attended Inbound—you should. I’ve spoken there for eight years straight and always try to bring new ideas. Each year, they keep giving me more opportunities—from main stage to workshops. I think you attended the 90-minute workshop, right? Hopefully it wasn’t boring!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:48.61)
Yeah, it was excellent. I love this stuff, so I was taking lots of notes.

Sangram Vajre (02:52.814)
That was fun. The whole idea was: how can you build your entire go-to-market strategy on a single slide? Now, people might think, “There’s no way—you need way more detail.” But it’s not about making it complete; it’s about making it clear.

So everyone can be aligned. For example, in the operating system we’ve developed, we write research about it every Monday in a newsletter called GTM Monday, read by 175,000 people. The eight pillars are based on the most important questions. And Kerry, I don’t know if you’ll agree, but I think I’ve done a disservice for two decades by asking the wrong question.

Like, I used to ask, “Where can we grow?”—which sounds smart but is actually foolish. The better question is, “Where can we grow the most, the fastest, the best, at the highest margin?” That’s the true business perspective. So the operating system is built around these eight essential questions.

If every executive team can align on these—not with certainty, but with clarity—then they can gain a clear understanding of what they’re doing, where they’re going, who their ICP is, what bets they’re making, and which motions to pursue. I’ve done this over a thousand times with executive teams, helping them build their entire go-to-market strategy on a single slide. And it’s like a lightbulb moment for them: “Okay, now I know what bets we’re making and how my team is aligned.” It’s a beautiful thing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:50.988)
Yeah, because that’s one of the hardest challenges across business strategy and growth: where to invest, where to lean in. So bring us through the questions and framework.

Sangram Vajre (05:01.688)
Yeah. So the first one is “Where can you grow the most?” The second one is really about what we call the Market Investment Map. I’ll give you maybe three or four so people can get an idea. The Market Investment Map is especially useful for companies with more than one product or more than one segment. This is the least used but most valuable framework companies should be using.

You might remember from the Inbound talk—I used HubSpot as an example since I was speaking at Inbound. It’s interesting because at my last company, Terminus, we acquired five companies in eight years. So we had to learn this process. The Market Investment Map is about matching your best segments to the best products to create the highest-margin offering.

If your entire business focuses only on pipeline and revenue—which sounds right—you’re actually focused on the wrong things. You may have seen people post on LinkedIn saying, “I generated $10 million in pipeline,” and then a month later, they’re laid off. Why? Because that pipeline didn’t matter. It might have been general pipeline, but if you looked at pipeline within your ICP—the customers your company really needs to close, retain, and expand—it might have only been half a million. That’s not enough to sustain growth or justify your role.

So, understanding the business is critical. It’s not just about understanding marketing skills like demand gen, content, or design. Those are table stakes. You need to understand the business of marketing—how the financials work, how to drive revenue, and how to say, “Yeah, we generated $10 million in pipeline, but only half a million was within ICP, so it won’t convert or drive the margin we need.” That level of EQ and IQ is what leaders need today.

Our go-to-market operating system goes deep into areas like this.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:31.022)
And I love the alignment with the ICP. I’m sure you’ll get deeper into that. I also know you talk about getting rid of MQLs because the real focus should be on getting closer to the ICP—on who’s actually going to drive revenue.

Sangram Vajre (07:45.892)
Yeah. John Miller, a good friend who co-founded Marketo, has been writing about this too. I was the CMO of Pardot. Then we both built ABM companies—I built Terminus; he built Engagio, which is now part of Demandbase. We’ve been evangelizing the idea of efficient marketing machines for the last two decades.

We’re coming full circle now. That approach made sense in the “growth at all costs” era. But in this “efficient growth” era, everything can be measured. The dark funnel is real. AI can now accelerate your team’s output and throughput. So we have to go back to first principles—what do your customers really want?

I was in a discussion yesterday with executives and middle managers, and the topic of AI came up. Some were worried it would take their jobs. And I said, “Yes, it absolutely will—and it should.” I gave the example I wrote about recently: imagine you were the best horseman, with saddles, barns, and a generational business built around horses. Then Henry Ford comes along with four wheels. You just lost your job—not because you were bad, but because you got infatuated with the horse, not with your customer’s need to get from point A to point B.

Horses did that—it was better than walking. But then came cars, trains, airplanes. Business evolves. If you focus on your customers’ needs—better, faster, cheaper—you’ll always be excited about innovation rather than afraid of it. So yes, AI will replace anyone who stays on their horse. If you’re riding the demand gen horse or relying only on content creation, a lot is going to change. Get off the horse, refocus on customer needs, and figure out how to move your business forward.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:21.708)
Yeah. So talk a bit about honing in on the ICP. I know in one of the sessions you asked, “Who’s your target audience?” And of course, there was one guy in the front row who said, “Everyone,” and we all laughed. But I still hear that all the time. Talk about how important it is, to your point, to know your customer and get obsessed with what they need.

Sangram Vajre (10:45.56)
Yeah. So the first pillar of the go-to-market operating system is called TRM, or Total Relevant Market. We introduced that in the book MOVE for the first time. It’s a departure from TAM—Total Addressable Market—which is what that guy in the front row was referring to during that session. It was epic, and I think he was a sales leader, so it was even funnier in a room full of marketers.

But it’s true—and real. He was being honest, and I appreciated that. The reality is, we’ve all been conditioned to focus on more and more—bigger and bigger markets. That makes sense if you have unlimited funds and can raise money. It makes sense if the market is huge and you're just trying to get in and have more people doing outbound.

As a matter of fact, a few weeks ago, we did a session where someone said something profound that I’ll never forget. He said, “The whole SDR function is a feature bug in the VC model.” That was fascinating—because the whole SDR model was built to get as many leads as possible, assign 22-year-olds to make cold calls, and push them to AEs.

We built this because it worked on a spreadsheet. If we generate 1,000 leads, we need 50 callers to convert them. It’s math. But nobody really tried to improve it because we had the money. Now we’re in a different world. We have clients doing $10–15 million in revenue with five-person teams automating so much.

People don’t read as many automated emails. My phone filters out robocalls, so I never pick up unless it’s someone I know. Non-personalized emails go into a folder I never open. Yet people keep sending thousands of them, thinking it works.

For example, I send our GTM Monday newsletter via Substack. It’s free for readers, and it’s free for me to send—even to 175,000 people. Meanwhile, marketers spend thousands every time they email their list using legacy tools. Why? Because these people haven’t opted in to be part of the journey the way Substack subscribers have.

The market has changed. Buying big marketing automation tools for $100,000 is going to change drastically. Fractional leaders and agencies will thrive because what CEOs really need is people like you—and frameworks like a go-to-market operating system—to guide them. You and I have the gray hair and battle scars to prove it. What matters now is using a modern framework, implementing it, and measuring outcomes differently.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:08.11)
Yeah, you bring up such a valid point. In so many of my conversations, I see the same thing. It’s been a sales-led growth strategy for years. Investments went to sales—more BDRs, more cold emails, more tech stack partners.

Even as I was starting my consultancy, I’d talk to partners or prospects who’d say, “Well, we just hired more salespeople. We want to see how that goes.” But to your point, without the foundational framework—without targeting the right audience—you’re just spinning your wheels on volume.

Sangram Vajre (15:06.318)
Exactly. One area we emphasize in our go-to-market operating system is differentiation. Everyone’s doing the same thing. Let me give you an example. Last week, I looked at a startup’s email tool that reads your emails and drafts responses automatically. Super interesting. I use Superhuman for email.

Two days later, Superhuman sent an email saying they’d launched the exact same feature. So this startup spent time and money building a feature, and Superhuman—already with a huge user base—replicated and launched it instantly. That startup is out of business.

With AI, product development is lightning fast. So product is no longer your differentiator. Your differentiation now is how you tell your story, how quickly you grab attention, how well you build and maintain a community. That becomes your moat. Those first principles matter more than ever. Product is just table stakes now.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:33.878)
Right. And connecting that to your marketing strategy, your communication, your messaging—it also sets up your sales team to close faster. By the time a prospect talks to a rep, your marketing has already educated them on your differentiation. So talk more about the stages and what companies need to keep in mind when applying your go-to-market framework.

Sangram Vajre (17:07.482)
One of the things we mention in the book—and go really deep into in our operating system—is this 3P format: Problem-Market Fit, Product-Market Fit, and Platform-Market Fit. We believe these are the three core stages of a business. I experienced them firsthand at Pardot, Salesforce, and Terminus through multiple acquisitions.

If you remember, I always talk about the “squiggly line,” because no company grows up and to the right in a straight line. If you look at daily, weekly, or monthly insights, there are dips—just like a stock market chart. So the squiggly line shows you can go from Problem to Product, but you’ll experience a dip. That’s normal and natural. Same thing when you go from Product to Platform—you hit a dip. Those dips are what we call the “valleys of death.”

Some companies overcome those valleys and cross the chasm, and others don’t. Why? Because at those points, they discover they can market and sell, but they can’t deliver. Or maybe they can deliver, but they can’t renew. Or maybe they can renew but not expand. Each gap becomes a value to fix in the system.

And it’s hard. I’ve gone from $5 million to $10 million to $15 million, all the way to $100 million in revenue—and every 5 to 10 million increment brings a new set of challenges. You think you’ve got it figured out, and then you don’t—because everything else has to change with scale.

I’ll never forget one company I was on the board of—unfortunately, it didn’t make it. The CEO was upset because they were doing $20 million in revenue but didn’t get the valuation they wanted. Meanwhile, a competitor doing only $5 million in revenue in the same space got a $500 million valuation. Why? Because the $20M company was doing tons of customization—still stuck in Problem-Market Fit. The $5M company had reached Product-Market Fit and was far more efficient. Their operational costs were lower, and their NRR was over 120%.

If you’ve read some of my research, you know I’m all in on NRR—Net Revenue Retention—as the #1 metric. If you get NRR above 120%, you’ll double your revenue in 3.8 years without adding a single new customer. That’s what executives should focus on.

That’s why we say the CEO owns go-to-market. All our research shows that if the CEO doesn’t own it, you’ll have a really hard time scaling.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:23.992)
That makes so much sense, because everything you’re talking about—while it includes marketing functions—is really business strategy. It needs to be driven top-down. It has to be the North Star the whole company is paddling toward.

I’ve been in organizations where that’s not the case. And as you said, leadership has to have the knowledge and strategic awareness to navigate those pivots—those valleys of death. So talk about how hard it is to bring new frameworks into an organization and the change management that comes with that. As you evangelize the idea that the CEO owns GTM, what’s resonating most with them?

Sangram Vajre (21:26.456)
Great question. First of all, CEOs who get it—they love it. The people who struggle most are actually CMOs and CROs because they feel like they should be the ones owning go-to-market. And while their input is critical, they can’t own it entirely.

In all our advisory work, Kerry, we mandate two things:

1. The CEO must be in the room. We won’t do an engagement without that.
   
    
2. The executive team must be involved. We don’t do one-on-one coaching—because transformation happens in teams.

People often get it wrong. They think, “We need better ICP targeting, so that’s marketing’s job.” Or, “We need pipeline acceleration—let sales figure that out.” Or, “We have a retention issue—fire the CS team.” No. The problem isn’t a department issue—it’s a process and team issue.

The CEO is the most incentivized person to bring clarity, alignment, and trust—the three pillars of our GTM operating system. They’re the ones sitting in all the one-on-one meetings, burning out from the lack of alignment. The challenge is most CEOs don’t know what it means to own GTM. It feels overwhelming.

So we help them reframe that. Owning doesn’t mean running GTM. It means orchestrating clarity, alignment, and trust. Every meeting they lead should advance one of those. That’s the job. When the ICP is agreed upon, marketing should be excited to generate leads for it. Sales should be eager to follow up. CS should be relieved they’re not getting misaligned customers. That’s leadership. And there’s no one more suited—or incentivized—to lead that than the CEO.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:08.11)
Absolutely. And the CFO plays a key role too—holding the purse strings, understanding where the investments should go.

Sangram Vajre (24:20.622)
Yes. In fact, in the book and in our research, we emphasize the importance of RevOps—especially once a company reaches Product-Market Fit and moves toward Platform-Market Fit.

If you’re operating across multiple products, segments, geographies, or using multiple GTM motions, the RevOps leader—who often reports to the CFO or CEO—becomes critical. I’d say they’re the second most important person in the company from a strategy standpoint.

Why? Because they’re the only ones who can look at the whole picture and say, “We don’t need to spend more on marketing; we need to fix the sales process.” A marketing leader won’t say that. A sales leader won’t say that. You need someone who can objectively assess where the real bottleneck is.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:17.836)
Yeah, that definitely makes so much sense. Are there other areas—maybe below the executive team—that help educate the company from a change management perspective to gain buy-in? Or is it really a company-wide change?

Sangram Vajre (25:33.742)
Yeah, you mentioned ABM earlier. Having written a few books on ABM and building Terminus, we’ve seen thousands of companies go through transformation. We now have over 70,000 students who’ve gone through our courses. I love getting feedback.

What’s interesting is that ABM has been great for aligning sales and marketing—but it hasn’t transformed the company. Go-to-market is not a marketing or sales strategy. It’s a business strategy. It has to bring in CS, product, finance—everyone.

Where companies often fail is by looking at go-to-market too narrowly—like it’s just a product launch or a sales campaign. That’s way too myopic. Those companies burn a lot of cash.

At the layer below the executive team, it gets harder because GTM is fundamentally a leadership-driven initiative. An SDR, AE, or director of marketing typically doesn’t have the incentive—or business context—to drive GTM change. But they should get familiar with it.

That’s why we created the GTM Operating System certification. Hundreds of professionals have gone through it—including you! And now people are bringing those frameworks into leadership meetings.

They’ll say, “Hey, let’s pull up the 15 GTM problems and see where we’re stuck.” Or, “Let’s revisit the 3 Ps—where are we today?” Or use one of the assessments. It’s pretty cool to see it in action.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:35.758)
Yeah, and it’s extremely valuable. I love that it’s a tool that helps drive company-wide buy-in and educates the people responsible for the actions. So you’ve shared so many great frameworks and recommendations. For those listening, what’s the first step to get started? What would you recommend to someone who’s thinking, “Okay, I love all of this—I need to start shifting my organization”?

Sangram Vajre (28:09.082)
First, you have to really understand the definition of go-to-market. It’s a transformational process—not a one-and-done. It’s not something you define at an offsite and then forget. It’s not owned by pirates. It’s iterative. It happens every day.

Second, the CEO has to be fully bought in. If they don’t own it, GTM will run them. If you're a CEO and you feel overwhelmed, that’s usually why—you’re running go-to-market, not owning it.

Third, business transformation happens in teams. If you try to build a GTM strategy in a silo—as a marketer, for example—it will fail. The best strategies never see the light of day because the team isn’t behind them. In GTM, alignment matters more than being right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (29:27.982)
Excellent. I love this so much. Thank you! How can people find you and learn more about the GTM Partners certification and your book?

Sangram Vajre (29:37.476)
You can go to gtmpartners.com to get the certification. Thousands of people are going through it, and we’re constantly adding new content. We’re about to launch Go-To-Market University to add even more courses.

We also created the MOVE Book Companion, because we’re actually selling more books now than when it first came out three years ago—which is crazy!

Then there’s GTM Monday, our research newsletter that 175,000 people read every week. Our goal is to keep building new frameworks and sharing what’s possible. Things are changing so fast—AI, GTM tech, everything. But first principles still apply. That’s why frameworks matter more than ever.

You can’t just ask ChatGPT to “give me a go-to-market strategy” and expect it to work. It might give you something beautifully written, but it won’t help you make money. You need frameworks, team alignment, and process discipline.

And I post about this every day on LinkedIn—so follow me there too!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (30:54.988)
Excellent. Well, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation, and I highly recommend the book and the certification to everyone. We’ll include all the links in the show notes.

Thank you, Sangram, for joining us today!

Sangram Vajre (31:09.284)
Kerry, you're a fantastic host. Thank you for having me.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (31:11.854)
Thank you very much.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked some new ideas and challenged the way you think about how your organization approaches go-to-market and revenue growth strategy. If you're serious about turning marketing into a true revenue driver, this is just the beginning. We've got more insightful conversations, expert guests, and actionable strategies coming your way—so search for us in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe.

And hey, if this episode brought you value, please share it with a colleague or leave a quick review. It helps more revenue-minded leaders like you find our show. Until next time, I'm Kerry Curran—helping you connect marketing to growth, one episode at a time. See you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Kerry Curran—revenue growth expert, industry analyst, and relentless advocate for turning marketing into a revenue engine. Each episode, we bring you the strategies, insights, and conversations that help drive your revenue growth. Search for Revenue Boost in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe to stay ahead of the game.

In a world where AI is evolving faster than your org chart, how do you build a marketing engine that's both smart and scalable? In From Strategy to Speed: Building a Modern Marketing Engine with AI, I sat down with Mark Goloboy, founder of Market Growth Consulting. We unpack how AI is transforming B2B marketing—and why strategy still comes first.

From RAG pipelines and LLM optimization to lean team structures and rapid execution, Mark shares what today's business leaders need to know to move fast, stay aligned, and drive measurable growth. If you're tired of the AI hype and ready for more practical ways to accelerate performance, this one's for you.

Be sure to listen through to the end, where Mark shares what you need to do to get started building your AI marketing engine today. Let's go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.359)
So welcome, Mark. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Mark Goloboy (00:07.502)
Excellent. Thank you, Kerry, for having me. Mark Goloboy, I'm the founder and CEO of Market Growth Consulting. We provide a variety of services to everything from small businesses to public companies. Our clients range from a private manufacturer north of Boston to global public companies.

My background is on the sales-facing side of marketing. I’ve been the head of demand gen, marketing operations, and marketing analytics as I grew into marketing leadership. About two and a half years ago, I went out on my own to work directly with CEOs to fill in marketing gaps.

At smaller companies, we place fractional CMOs and heads of demand gen to lead marketing, filling in subcontractors and agencies to execute. At larger companies, we run projects covering everything from marketing strategy, org strategy, budgeting, go-to-market strategy, and building out systems—we're currently doing a HubSpot to Salesforce and Marketo migration. We also do executive staffing, placing directors through CMOs either as temp-to-perm so clients can try before they buy, or through contingent staffing where if we find the right person, the client hires them for their future marketing leadership.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:37.057)
Excellent. Thank you, Mark. You’ve seen it all and are still very involved across business challenges and needs from a marketing, demand gen, and go-to-market perspective. There are lots of hot topics we could cover, but what are you hearing the most from your clients today? What's hottest for them?

Mark Goloboy (02:03.662)
Marketing really grew in 2022 and 2023 in terms of department size. But I think a lot of us felt it—venture-backed companies especially, but really everyone—wanted to get smaller again in 2023 and 2024. That was a painful adjustment across the industry. Now, as we move through 2024 into 2025, everyone is focused on:

• How do we do more with less?
  
   
• How do we think about fractional or contract roles in areas we never would have previously?

That extends into AI-driven marketing, where every leader is looking to be more efficient and scale faster and smarter by using tools that take over some of the marketing workload. The real challenge now for marketing leaders is finding the balance between the people they need to hire, the money they need to spend, and where AI can make them faster, smarter, and more scalable—while still needing human review and strategic oversight.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:38.947)
Yeah, I agree. And you see so many emerging tools. I think if you search for AI in MarTech today, there’s been a huge increase in companies claiming to offer something new or different. But AI actually means a lot of different things. You and I were talking earlier about how important it is to dig into the formula and structure behind what’s labeled "AI." What are you seeing from that perspective?

Mark Goloboy (04:15.054)
Well, I think the big challenge, for me at least—I'm a solo entrepreneur running my own business with just myself and no employees—is figuring out how to work efficiently while wearing many hats.

I use subcontractors who are experts at what they do, and I hire based on likeability and capability because my clients will keep rehiring me if they like who I bring them and the work gets done right.

But because I’m a solo operator, I have to maximize my own productivity. So every day, I start by looking at what’s on my plate and ask: "Could AI help me do this faster, better, or more scalably?"

Whether it’s a deliverable, a proposal, or a project plan, I always pause and think about how AI can be part of the solution—even if it’s just for my internal work, not necessarily client-facing marketing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:31.545)
Thank you.

Mark Goloboy (05:43.870)
Each of the major frontier models—OpenAI, Google Gemini, Claude, and others—are developing rapidly. Every time I try something, it’s a little different, and the outputs are constantly improving.

Last week, I had a meeting with a prospect using an ABM tool I had never heard of. I wanted to appear knowledgeable, so I asked OpenAI to compare it to Sixth Sense and Demandbase, which I know well.

Within a minute, it gave me four pages of detailed research on each tool, plus a comparison grid. That would have taken a junior marketer on my team two months to produce. That’s how fast this technology is evolving.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:57.549)
Yes, same for me. There’s so much you can do faster now. You mentioned video editing, and I recently used napkin.ai to turn raw text into beautiful slides. It’s such a game-changer for solo entrepreneurs.

Mark Goloboy (07:27.790)
Exactly. Externally, too, clients come to us with needs, and it’s up to us to creatively think: "How can we use AI to deliver this better?"

Last year, we trained an AI model to write like a PhD psychologist who had run a department at Columbia Med. Using her writing, interviews, and videos, we trained Google Gemini to mimic her voice—and she couldn’t tell which blog posts were hers versus AI-generated.

This was mid-2024, when people still said AI content was bland. But we were producing PhD-level work that passed her own review.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:39.865)
Yeah, it's pretty incredible. It helps us do a lot more and get a lot more out of our hours and days—getting smarter and more effective. What are some of the other ways or tools you've developed for your clients to help them with their demand gen and other aspects of business?

Mark Goloboy (09:00.270)
Yeah, so I joke with my clients that I didn't know what the letters RAG meant in December—but now I do. It stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation. That’s about developing agentic pipelines to connect your internal data sources—whether documents, databases, or internal systems—to the large language models (LLMs), so you can move information between them and generate outputs informed not just by public data, but by your own proprietary data.

Right now, we’re building RAG agentic pipelines for a PR firm, for example. Their CEO prioritized the three use cases that would save their account managers the most time:

• Meeting scheduling and rescheduling, which wastes hours every week.
  
   
• Contract review, since they're doing placements in major media outlets and need to review hundreds of contracts a month.
  
   
• Media monitoring, summarizing brand mentions across the web and sending daily summaries to clients—something that takes an hour per client per day.
  
   

By automating these processes, they save massive amounts of time, and as they grow, they don't need to hire as many new account managers.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:58.467)
Yes, that's super valuable. I love that it allows them to free up time to be more strategic instead of bogged down in busywork. So what are some of the steps required for someone to set this up? How did you learn more about creating these pipelines and the RAG system?

Mark Goloboy (11:20.398)
There are some really good places to learn. The first one I always recommend is the Marketing AI Institute. Paul Roetzer is the founder, and I learn the most from him.

Paul and his content lead put out a one-hour podcast every week that breaks down everything that's changed in AI since the last episode. It’s incredibly rich information. I usually listen at 1.5x speed and get through it in 40 minutes. I don’t care about every topic, but I hear what matters and know where to dive deeper.

Beyond that, I follow a few amazing marketers—Liza Adams, Nicole Leffer, and Andy Crestodina—who are brilliant at testing new things and sharing what works. They save me countless hours of trial and error.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:41.133)
Thank you—we’ll be sure to include all of those in the show notes as well. One thing you mentioned was that the podcast covers what’s changed in just the past week. AI is changing so fast. What should people keep in mind when they're building these tools or leveraging different sources?

Mark Goloboy (13:01.336)
I'm used to building very permanent, robust systems—CRM, marketing automation, ABM platforms—that are meant to deliver value for years. But with AI, we have to accept that some development is disposable.

It’s crucial to prioritize effort. We help clients understand: we're not building something that will last 5 years. Some of the code we build today might be obsolete in 6–12 months.

For example, OpenAI just launched a new pipeline tool that replaced the one we were using. If we had spent six months building on the old system, it would already be outdated.

So we advise clients: build for today’s ROI and be ready to pivot constantly. If you’re rigid, you’ll miss the opportunity.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:47.747)
Yeah, it made me think about how, in a lot of organizations, it takes so long just to get buy-in and approvals to start using new tools. It’s a whole culture and mindset shift—especially for marketing leaders.

Mark Goloboy (15:07.788)
Exactly. I couldn't imagine a one-year approval cycle for an AI project. By the time you’d get sign-off, the tools would have changed and you'd have to start over.

You need faster review and approval cycles. Otherwise, AI-driven innovation simply won't be possible.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:29.475)
Yes, definitely. And that’s another benefit of bringing someone like you in—you’re well-versed in what’s changing, and you have the curiosity and experience to guide them through it.

Mark Goloboy (15:45.954)
Exactly.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:47.407)
So for people listening who want to get started—maybe building custom pipelines or just leveraging AI more—what are the foundations they need to have in place?

Mark Goloboy (16:14.830)
The most important thing is a good strategy.

When we come into companies, often because of turnover—whether it’s the CRO, CMO, CEO—they don’t have strong alignment on strategy anymore. If you don’t have a clear strategy that demands an investment, and you don't know how you'll measure the value of what you're building, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

So we always start at the strategic level first.

We also move fast. If you want a slow project, there are large consulting firms that are happy to take years and millions of dollars. That’s not us. We think in three- to six-month project cycles—then we operate and optimize from there.

We want to move quickly and get you results now, not years down the road.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:29.229)
That's such an important point. And it ties back to so many of the themes we talk about on this podcast—internal alignment, clear business goals, and unified execution across the organization.

One of the tools you mentioned that I think is really fascinating helps address the trend of AI tools becoming new search engines. Can you talk about how you’re helping your clients optimize for that?

Mark Goloboy (19:19.950)
Absolutely. Most of my clients are B2B. And historically, Google was how people found solutions. You wrote your content for Google—end of story.

But now, with ChatGPT and other LLMs, people are searching inside AI to get answers. It’s shifting fast—from 80/20 Google to maybe 50/50 Google/LLMs within a few years.

We partnered with a tool called Brand Luminaire. It analyzes how LLMs like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT surface information about your brand and your competitors.

Critically, it shows you what sources the LLMs are pulling from. That means you know where to focus your writing, PR, and SEO efforts—not just for Google, but for the LLMs too.

It’s a massive shift. Brands that don't adapt will lose mindshare at the point of research and decision-making.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:06.307)
That's excellent. It’s something all brands are going to need to prioritize as search behavior expands beyond just Google.

So this has been great, Mark. Thank you so much for sharing so many practical insights and tools. For people who want to get in touch with you and learn more about your services, where should they go?

Mark Goloboy (22:29.454)
They can email me directly at mark@marketgrowthconsulting.com—I’m very functional with my branding: market growth consulting is what I do!

Or you can find me on LinkedIn—I'm easy to find with my unique last name.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:46.541)
Awesome. We’ll put that in the show notes too. Thank you again, Mark, for being here and sharing so much of your expertise.

Mark Goloboy (22:55.064)
Thank you so much for having me, Kerry.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:57.071)
Thank you.

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked some new ideas and challenged the way you think about how to incorporate AI into your marketing strategy and initiatives.

If you're serious about turning marketing into a true revenue driver, this is just the beginning. 

We've got more insightful conversation, experts, guests, and actionable strategies coming your way. So search for us in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe!

And hey, if this episode gave you value, share it with a colleague and leave a quick review. It helps more revenue minded leaders like you find the show. Until next time, I'm Kerry Curran, revenue marketing expert helping you connect marketing to growth one episode at a time. We'll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“Affiliate marketing intersects with every part of your marketing stack—PR, influencer, paid search, content—but too often, it operates in a silo. The real opportunity lies in integrating it into your brand and performance strategy from day one. When you align affiliate with your broader media mix and apply smarter measurement, it stops being just a channel and becomes a strategic growth lever.” That's a quote from Lacie Thompson, an executive at New Engen and founder of LT Partners and a sneak peek at today’s episode. 

Welcome to Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Kerry Curran—Fractional Chief Growth Officer, industry analyst, and relentless advocate for turning marketing into a revenue engine. Each episode, I bring you the strategies, insights, and conversations that will fuel your revenue growth. So search for Revenue Boost in your favorite podcast directory, and hit subscribe to stay ahead of the game.

In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on one of the most misunderstood and under-leveraged growth drivers in your marketing stack: affiliate marketing. 

In Redefining Affiliate Marketing Brand Performance for Maximum Revenue Impact, I'm joined by Lacie Thompson—founder of LT Partners and now an executive at New Engen, a top-tier performance marketing agency. We'll talk about why affiliate deserves a seat at your media planning table, how to integrate it with your broader marketing strategy, and how smart brands are using data and measurement to unlock serious revenue impact. So stay tuned through the ad, where Lacie shares how you can get smarter about measuring affiliate and truly integrating it into your broader strategy.

Let’s go.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.23):
So welcome, Lacie. Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Lacie Thompson (00:06.617):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm Lacie Thompson. My background, before I started LT Partners—an affiliate marketing agency—was in affiliate and digital marketing on the brand side.

I was very lucky in the early days to have some really great mentors and leaders. After spending about six years on the brand side and then three years at another startup agency, I started LT Partners in September of 2018. We grew very quickly—very organically, I should add—

and were acquired by New Engen, which is a digital marketing agency, in June of 2023.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:53.998):
Excellent. Well, we're so glad to have you here. I've always been very impressed with your success—and congratulations on building your own successful company and getting acquired.

I know you've been in the industry a long time and have lots of expertise to share with us. So, to start: when you're talking to other senior executives, marketing leaders, CMOs, what's the buzz you're hearing? What are people talking about today—especially when it comes to affiliate and digital marketing?

Lacie Thompson (01:27.459):
Yeah, thinking of the big picture—what I found really interesting about New Engen is the way they have grown and adapted over the course of their history. New Engen is about eight or nine years old at this point, but initially started as a tech company. They built a hyper-granular bidding model on top of Google and Meta, primarily.

Over time, as those platforms introduced their own algorithms, that technology became a little less important. What they realized when they took a step back was—they were an agency. It was the people helping the brands leverage the technology who were actually making a big impact. So over time, New Engen pivoted to become a performance marketing agency. 

Then, just before the acquisition of LT Partners, what the New Engen leaders were hearing in the market was a need to stop thinking about marketing in silos of brand and performance—and to bring it all together. Because thinking about it more holistically is where a lot of brands are trying to get. 

We had seen that in Affiliate very early on. That was a big part of our growth and success—this focus on understanding the incremental value of partnerships and working more closely with the ones that were more incremental. 

For us, that means introducing brands to new audiences. We had been hyper-focused on that in our "channel"—I use that word in quotes, because there's always debate about whether to call it a channel. But we had been doing that for a long time. So, at the same time that New Engen was pivoting toward a digital marketing solution in the space—we had already been doing that for a long time in affiliate. And they didn’t have Affiliate as a capability. So it was a really natural coming together, because our thought process around measurement and how to evaluate how different marketing channels and methodologies create value for brands—whether it's within a branding ecosystem or a performance one—was very aligned. And we need to solve and measure for that across everything. So there was just a lot of strong alignment there.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:11.03):
They were so smart to acquire you—for your success, but also to see the potential of integrating an affiliate strategy into their offering. IWhere you and I have discussed in the past, I also grew up in a performance marketing world: SEO, paid search, paid social, programmatic. And the more I learned about affiliate, the more I realized affiliate needs to be part of these conversations. But what we’ve seen is that it’s really hard to get people—especially those who haven’t wrapped their head around affiliate—to recognize the importance, value, and potential of it.

Lacie Thompson (05:02.073):
Yeah, and I think that’s what’s really fun for me about the channel. Because affiliate, like I said, there's this debate around whether it’s a channel or a mechanism. And I think that's part of why it’s difficult for some people to wrap their head around it—because you don’t have an ad platform with a campaign structure. It’s not like you push a button and things change. It’s 50% data analytics and deep insights—and 50% interpersonal relationships and business development of sorts.

But what's funny about affiliate is it’s actually the one channel that really intersects so many different parts of your marketing stack: influencer, PR, even paid search. Some partners have capabilities that fall under other types of marketing channels. But for some reason, over time, there has been this trend of affiliate-only agencies. And this narrative that you need an affiliate agency—and a separate digital or performance marketing agency—and that the two operate in silos. Oftentimes, they're not as closely connected as they could be if everything were handled under one roof.

So I find the irony of that really interesting. It’s not common to see digital marketing agencies that have affiliate as a core area of subject matter expertise. And obviously, as someone who’s spent most of my digital marketing career in affiliate and partnerships, I found New Engen’s interest in that really exciting.

I think, as we’ll probably talk about here, when we think about measurement, and the amount of budget brands allocate to affiliate marketing—it’s so small compared to the impact it can have. And it's exciting to be part of a larger organization that has the infrastructure and teams to help us prove that value with advanced measurement.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:27.022):
Yes, definitely. And I'm excited to talk more about measurement. But we forget that, to your point, there still needs to be more buy-in, education, and understanding of affiliate’s value among CMOs and senior marketers.

As you said, affiliate is so full-funnel—it covers PR, awareness-building (influencer/creator or mass publications), all the way down to the research phase before purchase.

It opens the door to strategic opportunities and conversations. But it's the term "affiliate" that tends to trip people up.

Lacie Thompson (08:24.889):
Yes, just a couple of weeks ago, we were talking to a potential client, and we actually got into the affiliate portion of the conversation by first talking about performance PR and influencers—and the convergence of brand and performance. That really opened their minds more than saying, "We’re here to talk about your affiliate marketing program."

What was cool in that conversation—as sometimes happens—is you could just see this light go off where people start to realize this isn’t the same affiliate channel marketing that was happening 10 years ago. We’re not just a bottom-of-funnel ecosystem. We really have to change the nomenclature and the structure of how we reward partners to evolve past that old, negative perception.

Lacie Thompson (09:39.651):
So I hope—and I’ve seen—that the industry is shifting. More and more people are talking about it this way. It’s evolving, and that’s wonderful to see.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:52.79):
Yes, I agree. And I think the more upper-funnel opportunities—really, the awareness placements—are becoming essential. I know for PR agencies, if they want to be in a top publication, they need to have an affiliate practice within their organization or partner with an affiliate agency. That’s been driving a lot of the shift. And obviously, nothing’s grown faster than influencers and creators. It’s about understanding that there’s integration and overlap. There’s so much potential. And to your point, it’s really important to understand that affiliate’s not just toolbars or coupons.

Lacie Thompson (10:36.559):
Right. The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that you're essentially, as a brand, letting other people tell your story for you, right? And that is so much more powerful for consumers—hearing from an influencer, a media publication, or an editor. Especially editorial publications with strong reputations.

People have a lot of trust in those voices. They trust them more than they trust the brand. So we’re seeing a shift toward leveraging what your partnerships are saying about you in other marketing channels. That’s another cool thing about being part of New Engen: figuring out how to take what an influencer or a content partner like Wirecutter is saying and turn that into

content that gets in front of your audience through other channels. And I think a lot of people now know that performs much better than just the brand talking about itself.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:46.412):
Yes, I definitely think that third-party endorsement—especially from a trusted source—goes so far. Again, that ties back to what you said about affiliate being a brand strategy as well. You’ve talked about the shift from performance-only to brand-plus-performance integration. Talk more about how you’re approaching that within New Engen and what you’re seeing with clients or brands you're speaking with today.

Lacie Thompson (12:19.993):
Yes, I mean, historically, I grew up in the age of performance marketing, right? We had sophisticated MTAs. We were focused on understanding what the right MTA was, and how to tweak it in order to understand performance. But you get to this point where, when you’re hyper-focused on trackable KPIs, you become as efficient as you can be—but you're also not scaling. So internally at New Engen, a lot of what we focused on in the early days were DTC startups that scaled very rapidly, hyper-focused on performance marketing. But then, at a certain point, you reach a plateau. And the way brands have historically thought about brand versus performance is: performance has KPIs we hold to—ROAS, CAC, whatever it is. 

On the brand side, those don’t really exist. You're looking at engagement rates and lots of other indicators. As we've seen the two converge, we’ve needed to come up with better ways to measure the impact across the board. That’s led to our belief that the foundation needs to be measurement—specifically, a mindset shift in how you approach it.

You can’t rely solely on Google Analytics as your source of truth. You can’t rely just on your affiliate tracking platform—or even on some of the other channel platforms. So we believe that, to get past the performance plateau and actually grow your brand, you have to rethink how you're investing your dollars.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:26.38):
That is so smart. What I’ve seen over the years is that MMMs don’t include all the channels—not just affiliate. Media mix modeling often only includes paid touchpoints. So it sounds like you've gotten to a point where you’re really able to measure the impact. It’s not “Here’s your affiliate report over here, and here’s your separate search, social, programmatic report.” You're really looking at the data together. So talk a bit more about how you’ve been able to do that.

Lacie Thompson (15:02.307):
Yes, our SVP of Analytics, Andrew Richardson, is just incredible. His understanding of the whole ecosystem—I really respect it. Because oftentimes, affiliate gets pushed to the side, like the redheaded stepchild. But he actually really understands it. So when he built our MMM approach, everything includes affiliate. But it goes beyond that. 

It also includes: How are your competitors impacting your ability to grow? If they’re spending more on media, that has a negative impact on you. We’ve done things in our models that account for factors like: Is it an election year, and how might that affect your business? We’re also looking at your brick-and-mortar store performance and how your digital spend is affecting it. So it really depends on the business and its model—what components matter, the time of year, and everything else.

Lacie Thompson (16:08.943):
Every situation is different. So we want to come to the table with a model that makes sense for each brand. What’s really cool—and validating for me—is that early on at LT Partners, we built a proprietary platform called Lift. We believed just looking at the data in the tracking platform wasn't enough to optimize your program. We always believed that how much new traffic a partner drives is indicative of their incrementality. So we pull data from Google Analytics, match it with the tracking platform, and we’ve built insights and tools for our team to use on top of that data. We optimize toward partners who are introducing brands to new audiences. And with Lift, we have benchmarking data that tells us, on average, what percentage of traffic is new from content partners, coupon partners, or even individual partners.

When we talk with enterprise brands that have advanced measurement tools like Measured, Rockerbox, or Northbeam, sometimes they share that data with us. And we often see close alignment between the level of new traffic and the level of incrementality these models show. Same thing with our internal MMMs. So, while we look at multiple KPIs, it's validating to see that our focus on new traffic is supported by broader measurement.

That means smaller brands don’t necessarily have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are other ways to optimize toward what's incremental and valuable— and it doesn’t have to be a massive lift.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:34.678):
Thank you for sharing that, because there are so many data points. We talk about this all the time—how the customer journey is not linear. There are so many touchpoints. They go back and forth. Being able to measure impression data—like where someone read your article or saw your brand but didn’t take action until later—is really important. It’s a very normal behavior pattern. And being able to still attribute that back to the publisher matters. I remember hearing about brands cutting their affiliate marketing because they couldn’t prove it drove incrementality. But there’s this larger lift that you’re able to see. It just sounds like it’s helping brands get smarter and smarter about how they’re investing.

Lacie Thompson (19:32.163):
Yes, there are really a couple of different buckets when it comes to measurement to think about. One is actually being able to measure the impact—which I think requires a few different angles to get the right perspective on whether your affiliate program or any other channel is driving incremental value, and what that value looks like.

Then there’s another bucket: how do I optimize a program? How do I drive toward creating more incrementality? And those don’t have to be the same things. I think sometimes when I talk about new traffic, or first-click attributed revenue versus last-click attributed revenue, people ask, “Oh my gosh, do you think we should be using first-click attributed revenue as our measurement?” And I’m like, no—that’s over here. That’s a different conversation. I’m talking about what data we need to look at to try to improve what the measurement says over here. And oftentimes, that means trying to grow first-click attributed revenue because that is typically more incremental than last-click.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:50.476):
Yes, and to your point, it’s about looking at different data points and getting smarter. And I think the more we’ve seen analytics become more advanced—tracking more touchpoints—the more correlation we see between the channels and the impact they have on each other. At the end of the day, that’s what makes affiliate so incredibly valuable and important.

I’ve talked in the past about getting affiliate a seat at the planning table. When the brand is thinking about how to allocate budgets—TV, display, programmatic, search, social—affiliate needs to be part of that conversation. Within New Engen, you have that natural organizational structure to foster that. But it’s still a challenge for a lot of agencies and brands that aren’t looking at it that way.

It sounds like it comes down to getting smarter about the data you’re evaluating and how all those touchpoints are really driving impact.

Lacie Thompson (21:57.435):
Well, I think that’s the problem. You have this conflicting dynamic within the channel: it’s traditionally performance-based, and it’s optimized on a last-click basis. You’re paying your partners based on whether they drive the last click. And then everyone gets mad when the big partners figure out how to get that last click—and they say the channel isn’t incremental. Well, maybe that’s because you’re hyper-focused on bottom-of-funnel, spend efficiency, and you’re not thinking about partnerships strategically. You’re not thinking about how to grow the channel or how to measure it appropriately to understand the impact.

The last-click performance nature of the channel will never allow you to fully reward the right partners. It will never allow you to fully understand the value of those partners. So, the actual construct of the channel is in conflict with it having a greater impact on your business.

Some marketing leaders just say, “I’m going to let it do its thing, be super efficient, and not pay attention to it.” But I think that’s a huge miss. When you think about your holistic approach and how to grow your brand, a lot of people say, “Well, it’s so small. It’s only 10% of my spend.”

Well, it could be 15% of your spend—but have twice as much impact—if you thought about doing it differently.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (23:28.942):
Yes, and that spend is purely attributable. It’s usually a commission—or a cost-per-acquisition model—so it’s not like other channels where you're spending millions of dollars and may never know the outcome. So, there’s still a lot of education that needs to happen. But the brands you work with are lucky to have you out there helping them get smarter. So, thank you. 

For the people listening who are thinking, “I need to get smarter about this”—what are some of the readiness steps or foundational things they should have in place to better measure affiliate and integrate it into their broader strategy?

Lacie Thompson (24:26.095):
I think the first step is really just making sure everything is set up properly. Do you have your UTMs set up—assuming you're using GA, which most people are? Some people use Adobe or other sources of truth, but most still have GA.

There are obviously nuances and other ways to do it, but in general, you should make sure that your UTMs are structured appropriately within your affiliate program so everything flows into Google Analytics in a way that lets you match it up with your platform data.

Otherwise, you’re missing visibility into traffic driven by partner—relative to one another. You might also miss out on more advanced attribution models. That’s the foundation to build on top of if you want to optimize your partnerships more thoughtfully.

It’s also very important to have that data available to share with the partners. Publishers don’t know how much new traffic they’re sending you. They don’t get that feedback loop. The way we think about the data isn’t just for internal use—we want to share it.

We want to show partners the KPIs that are most valuable to the brand and ask: What can we do together to improve these metrics? If you give them that information, many partners are creative and clever and can come up with great solutions.

But a lot of them have been trained to focus on the last click, maybe a higher conversion rate or AOV. And that training does a disservice to the partnership if you're not giving them better insight—and helping them succeed in ways that also help you.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:36.182):
Yes, definitely. To your point, all of it helps companies and brands drive better results and outcomes. So it's about having the right data—and doing smarter things with it.

So thank you so much, Lacie. How can people find you?

Lacie Thompson (26:52.731):
I feel like I’m everywhere! I'm on LinkedIn, you can email me, text me—I'm always available to chat. I'm always happy to help. I love finding ways to improve the industry holistically.

I'm happy to give advice—or I love hearing what other people are doing that's cool and unique and special. I love collaborating with other brands. I'm one of those people who doesn’t really say no to talking about anything, anytime.

You never know where conversations might lead, so please reach out if you want to chat.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (27:41.73):
Definitely. Well, thank you. I’ll be sure to include all that information in the show notes. I really appreciate your time. I’ve enjoyed our conversation and look forward to having you on again in the future. Thanks, Lacie.

Lacie Thompson (27:53.859):
Amazing. Thank you so much, Kerry.

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Thanks for tuning in to Revenue Boost: a Marketing Podcast. I hope today's conversation sparked some new ideas and challenged the way you think about affiliate performance and full funnel growth.

If you're serious about turning marketing into a true revenue driver, this is just the beginning. We've got more insightful conversations, expert guests and actionable strategies coming your way. So search for us in your favorite podcast directory and hit subscribe. And hey, if this episode gave you value, share it with a colleague and leave a quick review. It helps more revenue minded leaders like you find our show.

Until next time, I'm Kerry Curran, helping you connect marketing to growth, one episode at a time. We'll see you soon.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"It’s no longer about winning the channel; it’s about winning the customer. Too often, brands optimize for individual platforms without considering the bigger picture. Today’s consumers move seamlessly between channels. If we reach the right audiences with the right message and high-impact creative, we lift all ships. The brands that break down silos and adopt an integrated, customer-first approach will drive real, measurable growth." That’s a quote from Sammy Rubin, VP of Integrated Media at Wpromote, and a sneak peak at today’s episode. 

In this episode The Future of Integrated Media: Smarter Digital Marketing for Revenue Growth I  sat down with Sammy Rubin, VP of Integrated Media at Wpromote, to discuss the evolving landscape of digital marketing and how business leaders can optimize their media strategies for sustainable revenue growth.

With budgets tightening and expectations rising, business leaders must rethink how they allocate marketing dollars. Sammy emphasizes the need for brands to unify their internal teams, leverage data-driven decision-making, and test integrated strategies that align with evolving consumer behaviors to drive sustainable revenue growth. 

Be sure to stay until the end when Sammy shares what you need to start optimizing integrated media asap! 

Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level! Let’s go! 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.186)
So, welcome, Sammy. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Sammy Rubin (00:07.025)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm Sammy Rubin, VP of Integrated Media at Wpromote, a leading independent marketing agency. I do everything from consumer insights and category intelligence to media planning and buying. Everything we do is underpinned by industry-leading intelligence, and we have an amazing creative team as well. So, we really support clients in achieving their business goals through all aspects of our work.

In my role as VP of Integrated Media, I oversee the teams developing integrated strategies for our clients—everything from CPG to retail to entertainment. I have the privilege of being part of these teams and helping to guide what we take to market.

Just a bit more background about me: I've been on the agency side my whole career and have had the privilege of working with some amazing brands. I’ve partnered with disruptor brands like SoulCycle and Yasso Frozen Greek Yogurt (which is always stocked in my freezer), as well as Fortune 500 companies like Nike and WarnerMedia. I started as a paid search manager, and it’s been an incredible journey evolving from a single-channel focus to an integrated media leadership role.

It’s been amazing to watch media evolve and see how having an integrated media lead on your business is a no-brainer. It provides a holistic view of how all marketing investments contribute to business results—which is what we’re all rallying around today.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:51.15)
Thanks, Sammy. I'm so excited to have you and hear about what you're seeing, hearing, and doing these days. We’re such kindred spirits—I also grew up in the performance media world. I actually started as an SEO manager because, at the time, paid search was still new. But you’re right—there has been so much evolution, and the channels are constantly changing and getting smarter.

To your point, you can’t just have a single-channel approach or strategy anymore. I love your integrated media role. You must get to see it all. What trends are you seeing these days?

Sammy Rubin (02:33.041)
Yes, my focus over the past 18 months or so has really been on commerce. There are many definitions of commerce in this space right now, but what I mean is partnering with brands that have direct-to-consumer objectives—whether through e-commerce, their own brick-and-mortar stores, or wholesale retail relationships, including Amazon.

When it comes to commerce, what we’re finding—back to the point of integration—is that it’s no longer about winning the channel; it’s about winning the customer. And when I say "channel," I mean both media and sales channels. Clients have sales objectives across different retailers and distribution points, but if we do our jobs right as marketers—effectively reaching the right audiences with the right message and high-impact creative—it lifts all ships.

We see this reflected in data and our own behaviors. You and I, like most consumers, search on social media, pre-validate in-store purchases on Amazon or Reddit, and then take the next step. So, it’s really important for brands to take a customer-first approach—understanding where they show up and ensuring their creative is more critical than ever before.

I think the latest eMarketer stats show that adults in the U.S. spend over 13 hours a day with media. That’s a lot. Like, what else do we do? Sleep? I know I get eight hours of sleep every night—at least, all my trackers tell me that. But if we’re spending that much time with media, exposure alone is no longer enough. We need to drive engagement.

That’s where creative is the new media targeting—it’s the new media strategy for many environments. In Meta’s algorithm, over 50% of what you pay is based on projected creative engagement and other creative-related factors. As brands, we must show up consistently across platforms because customers bounce from place to place.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:05.422)
That’s a lot—all our waking hours!

Sammy Rubin (04:24.349)
Exactly! And advanced measurement plays a big role here. Consumers will purchase wherever it’s convenient—whether that’s Amazon, TikTok, or in-store. We’re launching TikTok Shops for many clients, and having an integrated measurement approach helps avoid the blind spots created by siloed data.

For example, we often see a CTV campaign or a social program funded by a DTC marketing team drive sales at Walmart or Amazon stores. That’s because, to the customer, those distinctions are irrelevant—unless there’s a specific offer tied to the channel.

We build high-velocity media mix models for our clients through our proprietary tech platform, Polaris. This platform integrates foundational reporting, media mix modeling, and incrementality test design, helping us showcase the impact of different media activities on various business outcomes.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:25.41)
Yes, I love that. The holistic experience is key. Customers don’t care if an ad is on Meta or Google, and they likely won’t even remember where they first saw it.

I was just recording another episode on media mix modeling and attribution. The point made there was that we’re going back to measuring impressions and the importance of creative—because it provokes an emotional response and drives action. But we can’t control what action they take. We just have to ensure our brands are out there, engaging, and driving conversions.

Sammy Rubin (07:13.437)
Exactly! It’s about reframing high-intent actions. Are we seeing an increase in Instagram profile views? Organic social video views? These are proxies for site traffic. For many audiences, especially Gen Z, social media is the new website.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:41.198)
Right.

Sammy Rubin (07:43.121)
And that perspective needs to be incorporated into measurement strategies.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:49.486)
That’s such a great point. You also mentioned retail media—when you and I started, it wasn’t a thing. Now, it dominates strategy and investment dollars. How are you incorporating that shift into your clients’ strategies?

Sammy Rubin (08:15.781)
Retail media investment growth is astronomical. Retailers have turned into media conglomerates, and they want a bigger share of total marketing budgets—not just retail budgets. They now offer influencer marketing, off-site paid search via Google and TikTok, first-party retail data, and closed-loop measurement.

Retail media is just media. We know that brands have historically driven sales across all retail doors through broad awareness campaigns. That still holds true today. Clients now ask us whether they should invest directly with retailers or take a broader media mix approach.

We recently ran a matched-market test for a client, exposing certain markets to media activations while holding others out. We drove measurable 10-20% sales lift in those markets without retail media—proving that broader media strategies can also drive retail results.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:45.016)
Wow. Yeah.

Sammy Rubin (11:00.923)
We’re constantly testing to see what works for our clients. What works for one brand might not work for another. But with everything being retail media, the role of an integrated media strategist is to figure out the right places and spaces to activate and how to hold those dollars accountable for achieving objectives.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:21.432)
I love that example and the market testing approach because brands’ budgets are getting smaller, yet we’re all expected to do more with less. It’s about driving effectiveness and efficiency and figuring out how to do it. To your point, if you don’t have the budget, you can’t just dump everything into the retailer—you have to get smarter and more strategic.

So much of this revolves around consumer behavior and what they’re going to do. I know this shift—thinking more about consumer behavior versus channel targeting—is a big one for clients. How are you educating them and pushing for that integration?

Sammy Rubin (12:11.567)
Yes, it really depends on the brand. The internal organizational structure can vary drastically, even among brands within the same vertical or of the same size.

For example, we have CPG brands that have both a D2C marketing lead and a retail marketing lead. Others have a D2C marketing lead, a retail e-commerce lead, and a shopper lead.

Or, we might have a brand with a brand marketing lead, a performance and growth marketing lead, and a retail lead. There’s no standardization in terms of which teams drive which commerce objectives.

But in every case, what’s required is an integrated media mix to drive those different commerce objectives—whether direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, in-store, or retail. All of these teams start circling around the same media platforms and creative messaging but in service of different financial goals tied to different commerce channels.

When that happens, resources are duplicated, and creative production multiplies.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:31.138)
Yes, they start competing with each other.

Sammy Rubin (13:36.101)
Exactly. And I don’t know what the incentive structure looks like behind the scenes, but it likely plays a role in who wants control over what.

The bigger issue is the blind spots in measurement when there’s no unification or transparency across data, activation schedules, or even simple things like campaign calendars.

For instance, if the DTC team is running a massive CTV activation but the team managing Amazon retail media or brand search isn’t aware, they might not adjust their investments to capture that demand.

Having remarketing audiences set up properly and ensuring synergy between teams is crucial for marketing efficiency. And that requires unification.

I won’t sugarcoat it—it’s challenging work. Many brands have legacy structures and long-established ways of working. But the data doesn’t lie.

At the end of the day, all these different marketing stakeholders are laddering up to a single point of accountability—the CMO, the VP of Marketing, or another senior leader.

The CFO obviously cares too, right? They want to maximize the return on marketing investments and find efficiencies.

So, we’re building operating models to unify teams internally, especially across planning. What are the different goals, product priorities, budgets, and audiences? These will often be different for each team, but by coming together in an integrated planning session, we can align efforts.

That way, teams can draft off each other’s impact, shift certain responsibilities where needed, and ensure media dollars are deployed strategically. From a measurement perspective, we then report on both individual and collective goals.

We also do more integrated reporting and measurement. What’s the halo effect of different media tactics on different commerce channels?

For example, we’ve seen cases where a retail client scaled back social media, and the Amazon team later reported a bad sales week. When teams don’t communicate, they don’t realize the relationship between social media in the market and performance across different distribution channels.

Using data as a unifying factor is so important. It sounds obvious, but truly building that data foundation is critical.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:36.076)
Yes, I’ve seen exactly what you’re talking about—when internal teams don’t share their strategies, they either compete or lack alignment.

Your consultative approach—bringing an organizational and data framework to clients—must be invaluable for improving efficiency and effectiveness. I love that your clients are listening and working with you to optimize.

You also have a solution to unify this data. Can you share more about your data platform?

Sammy Rubin (17:38.973)
Yes, at Wpromote, our proprietary tech platform is called Polaris. It serves as the foundation for all our standard media reporting.

We have over 100 API connections with various media and data sources. We use this to build an integrated data taxonomy—not the most exciting topic, but extremely important—so we can see all our data in one place.

On top of that, we can layer in advanced analyses, including media mix modeling, incrementality test design, and scenario planning. For example, if we launch a new media channel, scale back an existing one, or receive additional budget, how can we best optimize our investments?

Sammy Rubin (18:38.141)
Once we have that data foundation, we can integrate additional factors like pricing data and promotional data to enhance modeling. This allows us to distinguish the impact of media versus price or distribution as key levers in achieving business goals.

It’s all about moving from crawl to walk to run, but it’s entirely attainable with the right data infrastructure.

When I joined Wpromote in 2020, one of my first priorities was building our media strategy department to help clients achieve holistic business results.

It’s one thing to have integrated measurement and insight presentations, but actually moving dollars and stewarding budgets across the entire media mix is critical.

Our media strategists lead this effort, ensuring innovation while leveraging the right mix of people, technology, and processes to drive success.

That’s how we help our clients.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:02.734)
It’s so valuable. As you were talking, I kept thinking about how not only the media channels have evolved but also how data has evolved.

Marketers are getting smarter, brands are targeting audiences more effectively, and investments are working harder.

This has been so helpful—thank you for sharing your expertise.

For listeners who want to get started, what’s the first step you’d recommend for brands looking to optimize and integrate their media strategies?

Sammy Rubin (20:42.545)
Step one: Have a conversation with all your internal counterparts who oversee different marketing investments and priorities.

Get a full picture of all media currently in-market—or planned—to identify synergies.

See where you might unlock value by integrating investments across teams. Often, the same media partner is being leveraged by multiple teams, but they’re working in silos.

Then, start building integrated media reporting.

You don’t need API connections or advanced modeling on day one. Just align on KPIs, how teams measure success, and how media investments are being attributed.

Once you identify trends—like, "Hey, two weeks ago, this team ran a large CTV activation, and we saw a lift"—you can start applying causal impact modeling to confirm relationships.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:30.85)
I love that. Sammy, thank you so much. This has been so valuable.

How can people find you?

Sammy Rubin (22:47.355)
Find me on LinkedIn—Sammy Frankel Rubin—or through Wpromote. If anything we discussed today sounds interesting, feel free to reach out.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:59.918)
Excellent! Thank you so much, Sammy. Looking forward to speaking again soon!

Sammy Rubin (23:05.51)
You too—thanks so much!

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

That’s a quote from Sammy Rubin, VP of Integrated Media at Wpromote, and a sneak peek at today’s episode. In The Future of Integrated Media: Smarter Digital Marketing for Revenue Growth, Kerry sits down with Sammy to discuss the evolving landscape of digital marketing and how business leaders can optimize their media strategies for sustainable revenue growth. 

With tightening budgets and rising expectations, business leaders must rethink how they allocate marketing dollars. Sammy emphasizes the importance of unifying internal teams, leveraging data-driven decision-making, and testing integrated strategies that align with evolving consumer behaviors to drive measurable results. 

📢 Be sure to stay until the end, where Sammy shares the key steps you need to start optimizing integrated media today! Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level? Let’s dive in!

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"Brands need to stop thinking of themselves as the center of the conversation and start putting their audience first. If you focus on fulfilling their interests—whether through information, education, or entertainment—you’re not chasing engagement anymore. You’re creating value, and that’s what drives real organic growth." That's a quote from Clayton McLaughlin and a sneak peek at today’s episode. 

Hey there! I’m Kerry Curran—revenue growth consultant, industry analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast. 🎙️ Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real results. If you’re serious about growth, hit subscribe and stay ahead of the competition! 

Organic social media has evolved—no longer just a place for brands to post and hope for engagement, it’s now a critical driver of consumer interest and revenue growth. But with so many platforms, algorithms, and trends shifting constantly, how can brands move beyond vanity metrics and turn organic social into a true business asset?

In From Social to Strategy: How Smart Organic Content Fuels Consumer Interest & Revenue Growth I sat down with Clayton McLaughlin, EVP at BBDO’s innovation division, Dobbino, to break down how brands can shift their social media approach from passive posting to proactive strategy. 

We dive into how  brands can leverage consumer intent, high-value content, and strategic engagement to drive measurable business impact.

Stay tuned to the end where Clayton shares the best next steps to improve the value of your organic social strategy. 

Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level! Let’s go! 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.107)
So, welcome, Clayton. Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Clayton McLaughlin (00:07.416)
Sure, happy to be here. I'm Clayton McLaughlin, EVP and business lead for an innovation division inside BBDO called Dobbino. I've been there for almost a year now, but I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the ad industry, working at agencies of various sizes and with brands of all scales. My background has always been in the digital world, but I now bounce between both the media and creative sides, trying to fulfill the full agency roster at this point.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:38.473)
Excellent. Well, we're excited to have you today. I know you’ve got a wealth of experience. There’s so much we could cover, but what’s top of mind? What’s hot for your clients and the brands you're working with today?

Clayton McLaughlin (00:57.036)
When you say “wealth of experience,” it really just means you're old. I appreciate that.

No, but seriously, top of mind for us has been organic social. It’s been my focus for the last year or so, and I believe it’s at the forefront of digital right now. It reminds me a lot of the early SEO conversations we had 15 or 20 years ago—discussing the value of organic presence, what it really means, and how we position it differently from just a traditional social platform.

We like to talk about it as interest media, not social media. Originally, Facebook was about engagement and communities, and while those elements still exist, social today is much broader than just Meta. There are multiple platforms, each with their own unique characteristics. However, the one thing central to all of them is that people use them to find information or engage in conversations about their interests.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:33.447)
Yeah, definitely. I know we joke about having “a wealth of experience,” but we’ve been in the industry long enough to remember the early days of SEO—when we had to convince marketers why it was important. And now, we’re seeing organic social take on that same level of importance.

Clayton McLaughlin (02:08.302)
Exactly. Whether it's a hobby, work-related content, or pure entertainment, everything people do on these platforms is interest-driven. If brands can shift their mindset from simply chasing engagement and likes to fulfilling audience interests, they can unlock a whole new level of effectiveness.

Marketing, to me, is 100% about a value exchange. If a brand can provide valuable content—whether through information, education, or entertainment—within their audience's area of interest, it completely changes how social strategy should be approached. Instead of trying to force engagement, brands should focus on offering value that aligns with consumer interests.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:30.717)
That’s such an interesting perspective because we all use social platforms differently depending on our mindset. Seeing it as “interest media” rather than just another social channel could be a valuable way to build awareness, attract new audiences, and foster loyalty with existing customers.

Clayton McLaughlin (03:59.906)
Exactly. If brands stop thinking about themselves as the center of the conversation and instead put their audience at the center, they’ll find new creative opportunities to engage with people in meaningful ways.

Not only does this help brands connect better, but it also creates incremental reach—which, let’s be honest, is the whole point. Even when I was on the paid side, everything came down to incrementality. Loyalty is great, but every brand needs a steady flow of new customers. Organic social is a great tool for that if done right.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:43.881)
That makes a lot of sense. So, how should brands determine which platforms to focus on? What’s the best way to decide where to invest their organic efforts?

Clayton McLaughlin (06:20.738)
That’s a crucial question. The first step in any organic strategy should be determining the right platform for your brand.

Each social platform serves a unique purpose. YouTube is all about long-form content (even though they’re pushing Shorts, which, let’s be honest, can be annoying). Pinterest is inspiration-driven. TikTok is built around short, engaging snippets. And so on.

Brands need to be ruthless in channel selection—choosing platforms that align with their identity and where their audience is already active. Red Bull, for example, is essentially a content company that happens to sell energy drinks. Their home base is YouTube, where they create long-form, high-production-value content. Everything else is a distribution channel for that content.

Nike, on the other hand, thrives on Pinterest, even though it's not an obvious choice. That’s because they’ve spent 40 years building an aspirational, inspirational brand—which fits perfectly with Pinterest’s ethos.

It’s not just about where your audience is—it’s about where your brand naturally fits and where your voice feels authentic.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:34.333)
Yes, that’s a great point. It’s not just about choosing a platform but matching the content format to what resonates with users there—whether that’s long-form video, short-form clips, static images, or text-heavy content.

Clayton McLaughlin (10:09.390)
Exactly. And measurement plays a huge role in this, too.

There are short-term and long-term metrics—what we call fast and slow data.

• Fast data includes immediate engagement metrics—likes, comments, shares.
• Slow data is about compound interest over time—how consistent organic efforts drive brand visibility, audience trust, and incremental reach.

Too often, brands get caught up in moment-in-time engagement and miss the bigger picture. Organic social isn’t about one viral post—it’s about consistent, strategic execution that builds momentum over time.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:42.825)
That’s a really important distinction. And it ties into proactive vs. reactive engagement.

Clayton McLaughlin (13:14.850)
Exactly. Organic Social isn’t a Field of Dreams—if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. You have to be proactive in community engagement.

• Reactive means responding to audience interactions on your own channels.
• Proactive means inserting your brand into relevant conversations elsewhere.

The best organic strategies don’t wait for engagement to happen—they create it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (17:28.268)
Absolutely. And quality over quantity is key—having high-value interactions with the right people is more important than vanity metrics like inflated follower counts.

Clayton McLaughlin (25:02.210)
100%. Be ruthless with platform selection and only invest in what you can sustain consistently. Inauthentic participation will hurt your brand more than no participation at all.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:30.823)
This has been so insightful, Clayton. Where can people find you if they want to connect?

Clayton McLaughlin (25:42.774)
Best place is LinkedIn—Clayton McLaughlin. Should be easy to spot—lots of gray hair.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:05.572)
We’ll link that in the show notes. Thanks so much, Clayton—this was a great conversation!

🎙️ Thanks for tuning in! Struggling with flat or slowing revenue growth? You’re not alone. That’s why Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast brings you expert insights, actionable strategies, and real-world success stories to help you scale faster. 🚀

🔥 If you’re serious about growth, hit follow, subscribe, and drop a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating—it helps us keep the game-changing content coming!

New episodes drop regularly—don’t miss out! 🎧

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

"The big ‘aha’ moment for most marketers comes when they cut something they thought was working, wait 30 or 60 days, and see that sales remain exactly the same. That realization—that they were spending money on something with zero impact—can be both eye-opening and unsettling." – That’s a quote from  Jeff Greenfield, CEO of Provalytics and a sneak peak at today’s episode. 

Today, we’re diving deep into one of the most critical challenges in modern marketing: measurement.

How do you know if your marketing dollars are truly driving revenue? Are you making data-driven decisions—or just guessing? 

In today’s episode Smarter Marketing Measurement – Your Competitive Edge for Revenue Growth, I’m joined by Jeff Greenfield, CEO and co-founder of Provalytics.

In this episode, Jeff and I discuss:
✔️ Why most marketing measurement is broken—and how to fix it
✔️ The impact of upper-funnel branding and how to prove its ROI
✔️ How AI and machine learning are transforming attribution
✔️ How to align marketing and finance using a single source of truth

Be sure to listen to the end where Jeff shares actionable steps to improve your measurement strategy today!

Are you ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level! Let’s go! 

Kerry Curran (00:01.144)
So welcome, Jeff. Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Jeff Greenfield (00:07.758)
I'm Jeff Greenfield. I am the co-founder and CEO of Provalytics, an AI-driven attribution platform. Since 2008, I've been in this space to answer that old question from John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The only problem is, I don't know which half." Since 2008, I've been helping marketers and brands determine which half is wasted and how to redeploy those existing funds to increase their return on investment.

Kerry Curran (00:45.678)
Excellent. We're excited to hear everything you know about analytics, data, and attribution. So tell us—when your prospects or brands call you for the first time, what are some of the business challenges they face that make them realize they need your help?

Jeff Greenfield (01:06.432)
I'd say one of the top challenges is the concept of overcounting. Most marketers operate in more than one channel—typically five or six or more. Each channel has its own way of counting. The best way to think about it is that when you're advertising on Meta, they don't know that you're also on TV. They don’t know that you're on Google. Criteo doesn’t know that you're on Amazon.

Kerry Curran (01:17.742)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (01:33.294)
If you have a thousand orders in a day and you're working across five partners, when you add up all their data, it may actually tell you that you had 5,000 orders. So, overcounting is a major issue. Marketers often ask, “How do I figure out all this math?”

Another big challenge is knowing that, as a marketer, you hear anecdotally that channels like connected television (CTV) and podcast advertising work for brands similar to yours. Yet, when you try them, you don’t see results, and you wonder, “What’s the magic? How is it working for them, but not for me?” You don’t see the numbers going up, and you’re trying to figure out why.

Finally, one of the biggest challenges is the constant tension between marketing and finance. Finance teams are heavy on math, and they often talk about marketers under their breath, saying we don’t understand how math works. Meanwhile, marketers think finance doesn’t understand how marketing works. This disconnect is critical because finance controls the budget. If you want more budget, you have to speak their language. Those tend to be the biggest issues.

Kerry Curran (02:57.442)
Yeah, it’s definitely a challenge. I’m nodding and laughing because we all know that CFOs are the hardest to convince of marketing’s value—especially for upper-funnel initiatives. I believe in the rising tide lifting all ships when it comes to marketing, but you're right. If you can’t align investment at the channel level or prove overall impact, it becomes much harder to justify.

You're helping clients identify the sources of traffic and revenue. How do you solve for this? How are you helping them build out a single source of truth?

Jeff Greenfield (03:47.534)
That’s the key—figuring it out. One issue within organizations is that, going back to my earlier example, if a company has five agencies, each agency is using its own methodology. They rely on platform metrics, their own internal metrics, and the marketing team’s metrics. So, if each agency uses three different methods, and then finance has its own, that means the company has 15 or 16 different sources of truth.

Kerry Curran (03:56.077)
Yeah.

Jeff Greenfield (04:17.358)
This becomes a huge issue. We solve it using a statistical, machine-learning, AI-driven approach.

Back in 2008, when I built C3 Metrics, we could collect 100% of the data—all website data, third-party data, and impression data. We could track an end-to-end trail, with date and timestamp, whenever someone converted.

Then, privacy regulations changed everything. Facebook, YouTube, iOS—they all said, “You can’t have impression data anymore.” Now, there are more data gaps than available data. So, we had to ask, “How do we fill these gaps?” That’s where statistics, machine learning, and AI come in.

The great thing is that we no longer need user-level first-party data. AI has become so advanced that all we need is daily aggregated marketing data from platforms and separate conversion data. We can link them together.

This allows us to connect digital and traditional channels to digital KPIs—whether on a company’s website, Amazon, or other marketplaces. We can even connect marketing impressions to individual scripts written each day.

We’re now in a privacy-centric world. We’re not tracking at the user level, but because of stronger math and faster computers, we can achieve insights that were previously impossible.

Kerry Curran (06:26.286)
That’s incredible. You bring up so many examples of how difficult it is to track conversions and touchpoints, and to demonstrate a channel’s benefit and halo effect. So, break it down—how do you help brands, as you’ve said before, measure the unmeasurable?

Jeff Greenfield (06:54.636)
It’s really about understanding how different channels impact one another.

I was talking earlier today with a TV agency for one of our clients, and I reminded them how much things have shifted. Years ago, direct response TV ads would say, “This product is only available through this 800 number—limited supplies!” People would stop what they were doing and call.

Now, consumers know they have options. They can visit the website, check Amazon, or walk into Walmart. The challenge is understanding how media in one channel influences conversions in another.

For example, a brand might run TV ads directing viewers to their website, but most people actually go to Amazon instead.

The biggest way we help brands is by taking data through a step-by-step process. First, we align the internal marketing team, because this is a new way of looking at data. Insights may feel uncomfortable at first—because they challenge assumptions.

Then, we work with agencies. Brands hire search agencies to follow Google's guidance. But when you're advertising in 20 different places, you need to shift focus. Convincing agencies to adopt a new methodology takes time.

Once everyone is aligned, we integrate the data into internal dashboards. This is where things get exciting—the CMO or VP of Marketing can go to finance and say, “Look at the dashboard. The numbers add up. Overcounting is fixed. The halo effect is accounted for.”

And that’s how you, as a marketer, get a bigger budget to grow the brand.

Kerry Curran (10:34.094)
That’s so smart. Change management is one of the hardest parts of implementing new strategies, especially in marketing. How do you convince marketers, agencies, and CFOs to trust your data?

Jeff Greenfield (11:04.142)
Great question. Unlike old attribution models, which weren’t incremental, our data is fully incremental.

To build trust, we back-test all data. We validate models using a method called K-fold testing. Instead of withholding a full month of data, we train the model with a month’s data but hold back different portions across multiple tests. This lets us validate the model while keeping recent data.

But the real proof comes when marketers act on our insights. The moment they cut a campaign they thought was working, and 30–60 days later, sales remain unchanged—that’s the aha moment.

Here’s the transcript with only grammar corrections, ensuring clarity while maintaining the original tone and intent:

Jeff Greenfield (11:04.142)
Well, that's a great question. Unlike the days of attribution—where the big complaint was that it was never incremental—our data is entirely based on incrementality. Everything we do is incremental. One of the ways we convince people of this is by back-testing all the data to validate the models.

Kerry Curran (11:05.688)
You.

Kerry Curran (11:11.054)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (11:33.986)
What I mean by that is, if you go back to the old days of marketing mix modeling, you would use about three years’ worth of data. The last month of data would be held back, and then you would ask the model to predict the revenue for that most recent month. You could then compare the prediction with actual revenue to assess how well the model worked, which helped build confidence in the results. However, those results were based on a three-year period and were primarily used for planning the next year.

Kerry Curran (12:03.832)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (12:04.158)
But marketers today are most interested in what happened in the last month or even the last week. We don’t want to hold back that data. There’s been a lot of work in machine learning and AI to validate models while still providing the most recent insights.

A technique called K-fold testing was developed for this purpose. It involves training the model using a month’s worth of data while holding back a portion of the days. For example, we might hold back the revenue, leads, or add-to-cart data for 20% of the days and ask the model to predict those values. Then we repeat the process, holding back a different 20%, and do this five times. By the end, we’ve held back 100% of the data at different points, allowing us to fully validate the model’s accuracy.

Even though we can show a chart demonstrating that the model predicts outcomes with, say, 93% accuracy, nothing beats real-world testing. If the model suggests that a campaign isn’t producing the expected results and recommends cutting it by 50%, we can test that recommendation by actually reducing the spend and observing what happens.

Kerry Curran (13:11.758)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (13:26.816)
The big “aha” moment for most marketers comes when they cut something they thought was working, wait 30 or 60 days, and see that sales remain exactly the same. That realization—that they were spending money on something with zero impact—can be both eye-opening and unsettling.

The truth is, if you’re not using analytics at this scale, much of what you’re doing may have little to no impact. That’s the first thing to recognize. But it’s also important to understand that you didn’t know any better before. The focus should always be on improving and moving forward. The best way to build trust in the model is to first show how well it predicts outcomes, and then implement the recommendations to see the results in action.

Kerry Curran (14:18.946)
Yeah, that’s so smart. I love how you’re able to prove the impact of your model and show how it works. It’s a challenge to truly understand what’s working in marketing.

One of the things we’ve discussed before is the impact of branding initiatives and how different channels influence the bottom line. How are you uncovering those insights for marketers, especially in channels where there’s less of a direct click path?

Jeff Greenfield (14:54.636)
First off, I think many marketers who have only worked in digital marketing have a warped view of how marketing actually functions. I blame Google Analytics for this because it’s entirely click-based.

Many marketers believe that we invest dollars to buy clicks, and clicks lead to sales—that’s how marketing works. But that’s actually not how marketing works.

The click is the last thing that happens. What we do as marketers is invest dollars to buy eyeballs, which we call impressions. We buy impressions to capture attention. The job of those impressions is to build awareness, and when awareness is built up enough, people will take action—whether that’s visiting a store or, in today’s world, clicking on a website.

For most brands today, their "store" is online, meaning clicks lead to conversions. But the hyper-focus on clicks—driven by Google, Meta, and other digital platforms—has pushed marketing dollars toward the lower funnel, at the expense of brand-building efforts.

Kerry Curran (16:22.126)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (16:22.242)
And that’s a problem because the lower funnel is the most competitive space. It’s a bidding war. If you spend the same budget this year as last year on a particular channel, you’ll likely get fewer clicks because the cost per click keeps rising. Just look at Meta’s and Google’s earnings reports—they keep increasing because advertisers are stuck in this lower-funnel trap.

Kerry Curran (16:42.232)
[Laughs] Mm-hmm.

Jeff Greenfield (16:50.102)
Larger brands are catching on. They’re moving up the funnel. Investing in upper-funnel marketing is the gift that keeps on giving because your funnel stays full. It delivers returns at twice the rate of lower-funnel tactics.

We measure this by focusing on how marketing actually works—tracking impressions rather than just clicks. Our impression-centric model allows us to compare different channels—linear TV, CTV, direct mail, paid social, and more—on an apples-to-apples basis.

Branding efforts often take longer to show impact, but we track multiple KPIs, not just revenue. We incorporate leading indicators, such as website traffic, call center volume, and other engagement metrics, to capture branding’s long-term effects.

Branding has always been critical, but now it's finally being recognized as the key to long-term growth.

Kerry Curran (18:40.856)
Mm-hmm.

Kerry Curran (18:44.812)
Yes, I completely agree. I’ve seen this play out across multiple brands. There’s been such a race to the bottom—just focusing on immediate conversions without building awareness or customer relationships.

I hope more marketers and CFOs are listening to this. Branding is the growth lane, and making smarter investments across channels is what truly drives long-term revenue growth.

Jeff Greenfield (19:18.614)
A thousand percent. Most marketing today is focused on offers, benefits, and limited-time deals. But brands that differentiate themselves with emotional messaging—connecting with their audience on a deeper level—win in the long run.

Marketers obsessed with lower-funnel performance often forget that consumers form emotional connections with brands, and those connections drive purchasing decisions. The complexity of digital marketing has caused many to lose sight of fundamental marketing principles.

Kerry Curran (20:14.53)
Yes, I agree! That’s exactly why we’re here—to help educate people on marketing strategies and foundations.

One key thing you’ve pointed out is that you can tie ad creative and messaging to performance. Going back to that emotional connection, how are you testing and measuring it?

Jeff Greenfield (20:43.694)
Absolutely. We incorporate ad creative as a dimension in our model. This works well for video, TV, and radio advertising. Even for search and social, brands can extract key ad attributes and integrate them into their marketing hierarchy.

Once you categorize creative elements, you can analyze which components are driving higher sales or leading indicators. This data informs future creative strategies, ensuring continuous improvement. That’s what makes this so exciting.

Kerry Curran (21:32.62)
I love that. Insights like these help brands become smarter, more efficient, and more effective with their marketing investments.

Jeff, thank you so much for your expertise. For marketers who want to improve their measurement approach, where should they start?

Here’s your transcript with only grammar corrections, ensuring clarity while maintaining the original tone and intent:

Jeff Greenfield (20:43.694)
Absolutely, because that becomes one of the dimensions of the model. What’s really exciting is that when brands actually take the time, they can easily analyze this for video advertising, TV, or radio. However, it becomes a bit more challenging when dealing with search and social ads.

That said, it doesn’t take much effort for marketers to go through their ads, identify key attributes, and integrate them into their marketing hierarchy. Once they do that, they can start seeing which ad components drive more sales or leading indicators. This, in turn, helps shape future creative decisions. That’s what makes this so exciting.

Kerry Curran (21:32.62)
Yeah, I love that. I love the level of insight, and anything that helps brands become smarter, more effective, and more efficient with their investments is incredibly valuable.

Jeff, I appreciate all of your insights. For the people listening who are thinking, I need to get smarter about my measurement, what are some foundational steps they should take to get ready?

Jeff Greenfield (21:59.128)
Well, the first thing I’d say is that most marketers running campaigns typically have a Google Sheet sitting on their desktop or laptop. It tracks daily spend, clicks, cost per click, and cost per sale. But what’s often missing is the impression number.

And chances are, when they downloaded the reports to build this sheet, impressions were included in the data—they just ignored the column.

Kerry Curran (22:09.422)
You.

Jeff Greenfield (22:28.096)
So, I’d recommend repulling all of that data for the last 12 months on a daily basis. Add an impressions column right after the date, then start graphing your daily impression volume alongside your daily clicks and daily sales. Look for relationships in the data.

This is a DIY approach to what we do at Provalytics.

Kerry Curran (22:40.204)
You.

Jeff Greenfield (22:54.302)
As you analyze these relationships, look for a time delay between impressions rising and an increase in clicks and conversions. When you identify days where impressions spiked and led to a later uptick in sales, dig into those specific days. What did you do differently? That’s the type of activity you want to do more of.

This is the first step in preparing for a paradigm shift—understanding that we buy impressions, and that’s where marketing analysis should begin.

Kerry Curran (23:17.166)
I'm sorry.

Jeff Greenfield (23:22.964)
The second step is education. At Provalytics, we’ve put a lot of thought into this, especially with all the privacy changes and how the industry is evolving.

We created an Attribution Certification Course that covers the past, present, and what we see as the future of attribution. Because marketing will continue to change, the best way to prepare is by strengthening your foundational knowledge.

The course is completely free. It takes about an hour and a half to complete, and there’s a quiz at the end. If you pass, you get a certification you can showcase on LinkedIn. It’s a great resource to deepen your understanding of how we got to where we are today.

Kerry Curran (24:11.278)
Excellent, Jeff! This is incredibly valuable. I’m definitely going to check out the Attribution Certification myself.

Tell us—how can people find you? Where can they get in touch with you and learn more about Provalytics?

Jeff Greenfield (24:25.634)
People can always find me on LinkedIn if they want to connect. They can also visit the Provalytics website, where we offer an on-demand demo.

We also host regular live demos, where we walk through the platform in detail and explain exactly how the modeling works. If anyone is interested, they can sign up, watch the demo, and schedule a time to chat with us.

I’m always happy to speak with marketers—or anyone interested in this space. I know that, to most marketers, this is just math, but to me, it’s kind of sexy.

Kerry Curran (25:07.382)
Awesome! Well, I’m glad we’re making data and attribution sexy again, right, Jeff?

Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, insights, and free resources with the audience. This has been fantastic.

Jeff Greenfield (25:13.506)
That’s right.

Jeff Greenfield (25:27.064)
My pleasure, Kerry. Thank you so much for having me.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“The brands that win aren’t just the ones with the biggest budgets—they’re the ones that strategically align performance and brand marketing to maximize reach and revenue.” That’s a quote from Cooper Schwartz and a sneak peek at today’s episode.

Hey there, I'm Kerry Curran, Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.

Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real revenue results. If you're serious about growth, hit subscribe to stay ahead of your competition.

In this episode, titled Monetizing Content: How Top Publishers and Brands Maximize Reach and Revenue Impact, Cooper Schwartz, Head of New Business and Growth at Money Group, shares his expertise.

In a crowded digital landscape, content alone isn’t enough. Brands need a strategy that turns visibility into real revenue. Cooper and I discuss strategies for leveraging publisher partnerships to create high-impact, holistic, cross-channel digital programs that drive both reach and ROI.

We dive into the winning formula for balancing performance marketing and brand strategy—and how to dominate non-branded paid search while outmaneuvering your competition.

Stay tuned until the end, where Cooper shares actionable strategies to optimize content for revenue growth. Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.107)

Welcome, Cooper! Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Cooper Schwartz (00:07.534)

Hi, Kerry. Thanks for having me. My name is Cooper Schwartz, and I am the Head of New Business and Growth at Money Group, a portfolio company that has been around for about 11 years. We own notable brands like Money.com and ConsumersAdvocate.org, as well as proprietary technology like NavChain. I'm also one of the founding partners and have been with the company for 11 years.

I was actually the first employee. I originally came from a therapy background—my mother is a therapist, and I thought I would follow in her footsteps. However, two of my close friends—one with 10 years at Google and the other at SEO Moz—convinced me to jump into affiliate marketing and help build this company. So here I am today, still finding opportunities in the market and excited to talk with you.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:02.843)

Awesome, thanks, Cooper! I had no idea about your therapy background. We could totally pivot and have a different conversation! I always say marketing is a lot like psychology—it plays a strong role in what we do, so I’m sure that background strengthens your expertise.

Anyway, I’m excited to have you here because I know you have a ton of valuable platforms.

Cooper Schwartz (01:09.484)

Yeah, yeah.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:29.617)

You have a range of brands and technology under Money.com, so I’d love to hear more about how you're helping brands navigate their business challenges. When brands or agencies reach out to build a partnership with you, what are they typically looking for?

Cooper Schwartz (01:51.672)

You're right—Money.com is a strong domain. Before it became Money.com, it was Money Magazine, a 50-year-old brand that people have nostalgia for. It was all about planning for the future and sharing insights on managing finances.

Today, brands still want to be aligned with the Money brand. But we don’t just offer content alignment—we provide a variety of campaigns and marketing opportunities. Many brands approach us saying, “We love the brand, we love the content—how can we work together?” That’s a great starting point for the many solutions we offer.

From non-branded paid search to placements across our ad network of about 150 publishers, we help brands engage with their audience in unique ways. Some of these publishers might be seen as competitors, but in reality, they’re “frenemies.” We help brands leverage content, align with our brand, activate paid search strategies, and secure placements on other high-authority sites, all while simplifying the management process.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:37.691)

That’s great. It sounds like brands really value the partnership and brand equity you offer. Can you walk us through how you start these relationships and build custom strategies to increase their awareness and authority?

Cooper Schwartz (04:03.192)

Sure! There’s always an initial “interview” process—almost like dating. Not to take it back to therapy, but it’s about getting to know the brand:

• What are their needs?
• Who is their target audience?
• What are their expectations?
• What are their key performance goals?

We get a lot of inbound interest because money impacts nearly every industry. But we have to ensure alignment goes both ways—not just that they align with our audience, but also that we can effectively reach their audience.

At our scale, we also consider resources. Can we accommodate the brand in a way that sets them up for success? We prioritize enterprise-level partnerships that move the needle for both companies. That often means ensuring the investment in a given category can be six or seven figures annually—we need to create impact on both sides.

Once we’ve established alignment—brand fit, budget, resources—we dive into which marketing channels make sense:

• Are they already running paid search? If not, why?
• How can we help them expand their shelf space on Google?
• Is brand awareness the priority? If so, we can integrate them into our franchise content like Best Places to Live, Best Hospitals, Best Colleges, which reach wide audiences.
• Are they struggling to get placements in high-authority content? If so, we can help them secure placements on Forbes, NerdWallet, CBS News, CNN, and others.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:53.058)

That’s great! I love that you have such a wide portfolio of solutions that are fully customized to each brand’s goals.

So, let’s say an enterprise brand comes to you for a rebrand, product expansion, or new launch. You work with them to align with the right publishers and strategies. Can you share a specific example of a successful partnership?

Cooper Schwartz (07:39.918)

Sure! One that I’m especially proud of is our partnership with ADT.

We’ve worked with ADT for about eight or nine years, originally in non-branded paid search—helping them reach high-intent consumers who were still undecided. Over time, our relationship evolved into exploring additional channels.

Last year, we launched a sponsorship activation for Money’s Best Places to Live, working closely with ADT’s PR, media acquisition, and marketing teams. The goal was to integrate ADT’s branding into content about protecting the best places to live.

This was a multichannel activation that included:

• Social media campaigns
• Video content
• Targeted PR efforts
• Weekly performance check-ins

The result? A high-impact security hub on Money.com featuring ADT across 100+ articles. It was a strategic, elegant execution.

Not only did we secure ADT placements on our own sites, but we also helped them get featured on CBS News, The New York Post, and other major publishers. This is the kind of holistic strategy that allows brands to gain visibility across multiple trusted sources.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:34.345)

That’s an excellent example! It really demonstrates how brands can layer multiple channels—from paid search to PR to content—to create a unified, impactful strategy.

Let’s shift gears to AI and Google’s generative search results. How do your strategies help brands compete with AI-driven summaries at the top of search results?

Cooper Schwartz (20:43.342)

Great question! One core belief we’ve held is that editorial integrity matters. We prioritize keeping a human voice in our content while leveraging AI in strategic ways.

Here’s our approach:

1. Investing in real writers & editors – AI can assist, but human oversight ensures depth and quality.
2. Creating content clusters – Instead of one-off articles, we develop deep, interconnected content that builds expertise and authority.
3. Partnering with already-successful publishers – Instead of relying solely on our content, we collaborate with trusted media brands that are already ranking well.

The reality is, the pie is big enough. Rather than fighting for every ranking, we focus on working with the best—helping publishers monetize better while delivering results for our partners.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:25.383)

That’s a smart approach. So, for brands listening today—what’s the first step if they want to explore this strategy?

Cooper Schwartz (25:40.910)

Start by researching who dominates your industry’s review space. Look at organic rankings, paid search, and media partnerships. If you see competitors investing in multiple touchpoints, that’s a sign they’re onto something.

Then, reach out! You can contact me at cooper@money.com or find me on LinkedIn.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:07.537)

Awesome! We’ll include those links in the show notes. Cooper, thank you so much for your time and insights today!

Cooper Schwartz (26:20.098)

Thank you, Kerry!

Kerry Curran, RBMA 

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. If you're struggling with flat or slowing revenue growth, you are not alone. That's why Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, brings you expert insights, actionable strategies, and real-world success stories to help you scale faster.

So if you're serious about your revenue growth, hit follow,  subscribe, and drop a five-star rating. It helps us keep the game-changing content coming, as we're dropping new episodes regularly—and you don’t want to miss out.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea

👉 Visit revenuebasedmarketing.com to start your growth audit—or DM me directly.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi there, I’m Kerry Curran, Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost, A Marketing Podcast. Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real revenue results.

So if you’re serious about growth, hit subscribe to stay ahead of your competition.

In this episode, titled Founder-Led Growth: Winning with Authenticity in a Noisy Market, I’m joined by Sheri Otto, founder of Growth Lane Strategies.

In today’s crowded digital space, authenticity is the ultimate competitive advantage. Sheri and I discuss the winning strategies behind founder-led growth and how to leverage the power of video and behavioral science to create demand-driven content that actually converts.

We cover the biggest content mistakes SaaS and B2B brands make—and how you can stand out in a saturated market without relying on AI-generated fluff.

Be sure to stay tuned until the end, where Sheri shares her expert tips on how to amplify your authenticity and turn your content into a demand generation engine.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.354)

Welcome, Sheri! Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.

Sheri Otto (00:08.462)

Hi, Kerry. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm super excited to be here! I'm Sheri Otto, the founder and CEO of Growth Lane Strategies. We help founders and SaaS businesses with content marketing for demand.

We don’t just create content—we engineer it to drive pipeline and demand for businesses. In this era of AI, we focus on human connection, helping brands deeply engage with their audience. We use strategies like video and behavioral science to support SaaS and tech founders in growing their brands and standing out in today’s competitive landscape.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:46.952)

That’s excellent, Sheri! I'm so excited for our conversation. I know we first met because you were giving me tips, and I said, "We need to share this with the world!"

You've been in marketing for a while—how have you seen the landscape evolve to the point where you realized businesses needed this approach and decided to start your own company?

Sheri Otto (01:07.906)

Absolutely! Coming from Big Tech, with over a decade of B2B marketing experience—including at HubSpot, smaller brands, and agencies—I’ve seen a common theme across all of them:

How do you create content for demand? How do you nurture leads? How do you cut through the noise and establish leadership?

The companies that grow aren’t necessarily the ones with the best solutions—they’re the ones with the best marketing. The ones that effectively:

• Connect with their target audience
• Influence the buyer’s journey
• Build efficiencies into their sales process

These were major gaps in the industry, and now, with AI-generated content saturating the market, brands are simply pumping out content without tying it to real revenue generation.

That’s why I started my consultancy—to help businesses strategically create and distribute content that drives demand and fuels growth.

A big part of this is middle-of-the-funnel content. Research shows that buyers in the consideration phase are actively looking for:

• Case studies
• Trainings
• Deeper educational content

Many brands skip this step, jumping straight from awareness (top of funnel) to conversion (bottom of funnel), leaving a huge gap in nurturing potential customers. I help them fill that gap in a way that ensures they are memorable in the minds of their audience.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:06.921)

I love that! We talk a lot about the challenges B2B brands face today—especially since it’s a buyer’s market.

Buyers are spending more time researching and learning about vendors before making decisions. That means brands need a strong content strategy to meet them where they are.

I also love what you said earlier—the best solutions aren’t always the most successful brands. The ones winning market share are those mastering video strategy and personal branding.

Many of my peers—people who have been in the industry for 20+ years—weren’t raised in the video-first era, so it can feel uncomfortable at first. Meanwhile, younger marketers are leveraging video effortlessly and capturing more attention.

I’m excited to dive deeper into your expertise! So, let’s start with your top tips. What tools can leaders use to accelerate their thought leadership and content strategy?

Sheri Otto (04:29.228)

First of all, Kerry, I love that you’re talking about this on your platform—kudos to you!

Step one is showing up online. You need to have a voice, an opinion, and a consistent presence.

A few practical steps to start:

1. Optimize your LinkedIn profile.
   
   
   • Use a clear, professional headshot.
   • Write a short, strong value statement explaining who you help and how.
2. Start creating content consistently.
   
   
   • Focus on thought leadership that positions you as an expert.
   • The winning brands today are leveraging founder-led and audience-led strategies—not just relying on traditional marketing.

Many professionals don’t realize that they already have valuable insights to share!

• You think about your expertise.
• You talk about it with colleagues.
• You write about it internally.

The key is getting those insights out of your head and into the world.

One simple way? Voice notes.

• Use Google Voice Typing or a notes app.
• Record your thoughts on key topics or FAQs your audience has.
• Then, take those raw notes and use ChatGPT to format them into posts, scripts, or bullet points.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (07:20.379)

That’s such a great tip! It removes the pressure of researching or over-planning. You already know your subject—just start documenting it.

Sheri Otto (07:50.134)

Exactly! And you can use tools to refine it:

• Google’s "People Also Ask" section – See what people are searching for.
• Social media – What questions are being asked in your niche?
• Competitor content – What conversations are trending?

When you see a question you already have an answer for—that’s your sign to create content around it.

And remember: Content with a purpose wins.

• Where do you want to direct your audience? A blog, community, newsletter?
• Every piece of content should connect to a broader strategy.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:31.817)

I love that! You also mentioned ChatGPT for formatting. A key challenge is consistency—how do leaders ensure they’re prioritizing content creation?

Sheri Otto (09:46.858)

Batching!

A simple way to stay consistent is to batch your content:

1. Write multiple video scripts at once.
   • Instead of one script, write three to five short ones.
2. Film in one session.
   • If you're new to this, start with three videos per session.
   • If you're experienced, aim for six.
3. Use ChatGPT as an assistant.
   • Give it a format you like and have it structure your content.

This way, you have weeks of content ready to go without scrambling last minute.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:12.809)

That’s perfect! It makes content creation more efficient and less overwhelming.

Let’s talk video—why is it the best content format today?

Sheri Otto (11:07.384)

Through that template, I'll do that three or four times, and that becomes my batch for the next month. It's a really cool way to stay consistent.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:12.809)

That's perfect! And I totally relate to that—when we can sit down and focus, we're so much more effective and efficient with our time.

You've talked about different types of content that you're publishing, but tell us more about why video is really the best approach.

Sheri Otto (11:31.584)

Yes, absolutely! The reason why video allows people to connect with you is because, first, people can see and hear you. They can see your mannerisms—like how my hands are moving—they can hear my voice. And if they hear it again, it triggers something in their brain. There's a sense of familiarity and comfort that develops.

Sheri Otto (11:59.902)

Video accelerates the lead nurturing process. There are a lot of statistics and studies around this, which is why I incorporate video at every stage of the funnel—middle-of-the-funnel training, top-of-the-funnel short-form content, and bottom-of-the-funnel demo videos. Video can do so much for you.

Another reason I strongly encourage video as part of your go-to-market strategy and personal brand is that all social media platforms are prioritizing video in their algorithms.

If you pull the 2024 report from LinkedIn, it will tell you—video is key. Platforms are pushing video, meaning they’re giving more reach and impressions to short-form videos.

The sweet spot is 60 to 90 seconds—this gives you the opportunity to get in front of more eyeballs because the algorithms are favoring vertical short-form videos.

Especially, Kerry, when you have a strong hook, which I know we'll get into in a second. But yes, that’s my recommendation—and I think you and I will be working on this soon too!

One thing I want to say before we get into the hook is that a lot of times, we feel like everything needs to be perfect—polished words, flawless delivery, a professional setup.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:02.686)

Yes.

Sheri Otto (13:23.732)

But actually, that mindset is counterintuitive because people relate to you more when you’re not perfect. Authenticity resonates.

That’s going to carry even more weight now that AI is dominating the digital space. How can you stand out? By being real.

Share your stories, share your vulnerabilities—because that's how we truly connect.

I always push for storytelling in video because that’s how we create deeper connections.

And remember—your video doesn't have to be a perfect production. You don’t need perfect lighting, a professional setup, or a fancy studio. You could literally just stand in front of a plain wall.

At the end of the day, people are curious about people.

And no matter how advanced AI becomes, human connection is still currency.

So just start—try it out, and you’ll see the difference.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:17.193)

I love that! And you're right.

Some of your best videos are so natural—you're out and about, sometimes outside on a sunny day, sometimes inside. But every time, it creates that human connection, and it makes you a more authentic advocate for your audience.

So, let's get to the hook. I know that’s often the hardest part. Talk to us about why hooks matter and share some tips for creating a strong one.

Sheri Otto (14:22.35)

You got it! Okay, so we all know that when people are scrolling, they’re looking to either:

1. Be informed
2. Be entertained
3. Be educated

And because we’re constantly scrolling on autopilot, we need something to disrupt that pattern.

That’s where your hook comes in.

You need a strong hook to stop the scroll.

I hear objections to this sometimes, Kerry. A colleague of mine who’s been in business for over 20 years once told me, “I don’t want to sound too hooky.”

And my response was—why is that a bad thing?

You don’t have to sound gimmicky—you just need to get their attention.

That’s the reality.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:14.609)

Exactly!

Sheri Otto (15:41.858)

In a world where AI can generate anything, our challenge is retaining attention—and the hook is how you do it.

Some of the best hooks are:

1. Bold statements
2. Contrarian viewpoints
3. Curiosity-driven openers

But the key is making it easily digestible.

A great hook makes people stop and think, “Huh, that’s interesting.”

And here’s something not a lot of people realize—short hooks work better than long ones.

The first sentence should be compact and powerful—almost like a catchphrase.

For example, one of my best-performing hooks was:

"We all need to create content to get discovered, right?"

That video got hundreds of thousands of impressions because:

1. It’s a universal truth—people agree with it.
2. It makes them curious—where is she going with this?
3. It’s a question—which our brains automatically want to answer.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:45.095)

I love that!

Sheri Otto (17:07.634)

Exactly. And I use questions a lot in my hooks because our brains are wired to respond to them.

For example, I once did a “day in the life” video with the hook:

"Ever wondered what a go-to-market strategy really looks like?"

And that one did really well—several hundred thousand impressions. It made people think, Yeah, we all do need to create content. Okay, what’s she talking about? or What do you mean?

So, here’s the thing about questions—when you use a question as your hook, something happens in our brains: we can’t ignore it.

That video performed incredibly well because people already had their own opinions, and they wanted to compare them to mine.

So when you’re crafting a hook, think:

• Does this make people curious?
• Does it challenge a common belief?
• Is it short and easy to consume?

If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track!

I learned this years ago—if you ask a question, it's harder to ignore because our brains are automatically inclined to answer it.

For example, in one of my day in the life videos, I used the hook:

"Have you ever wondered what a go-to-market strategy really looks like?"

That video did really well because people already have opinions on go-to-market strategies. So when I shared my perspective, people wanted to compare it to their own.

It's all about understanding your audience and the themes that resonate with them.

Sheri Otto (18:27.618)

Bold statements and questions make great hooks because they’re easily consumable.

So no long-winded sentences—keep them compact.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:35.005)

I love that! That’s such valuable, actionable advice.

Now, I know everyone wants their content to go viral. While there’s no guaranteed way to make that happen, what are some things people can do to increase their chances of getting picked up by the algorithm?

SheriOtto (18:43.992)

Yeah!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:02.609)

What are your top tips for gaining traction with the algorithm?

Sheri Otto (19:04.472)

So, the number one thing algorithms prioritize is watch time.

If your video is five minutes long, most people won’t watch the whole thing. That’s why you need to keep your videos short—because watch time matters.

Inside your video, you can also use micro-hooks—mini hooks that keep people engaged throughout.

If you’re giving value, you want to build anticipation so there’s a big payoff at the end.

This aligns with the behavioral science principle called the curiosity gap (or information gap).

It works like this:

• You give people half of the information upfront.
• You let them know they’ll get the rest at the end.
• This keeps them engaged because they want to stick around for the full answer.

The result? Increased watch time.

And when the algorithm detects higher watch time, it pushes your video to more people.

I can’t guarantee you’ll go viral, but this strategy will help you get more impressions.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:16.749)

That’s huge!

I love that you're tying psychology into this. I was a psych major too, so I love applying human behavior to marketing strategy.

And what you’re describing reminds me of classic storytelling techniques—building tension and getting people to lean in.

Sheri Otto (20:44.189)

Exactly!

And you don’t even have to say, “Wait until the end.”

Instead, you could say:

"There are three go-to-market strategies shaping the market today."

Then, in the first 50 seconds, you give two of them—and people want to stay for the third.

The third point doesn’t come until the last five or ten seconds—but by structuring your video this way, you increase watch time while still providing value.

It’s all about using behavioral science to stop the scroll and keep people engaged.

I love doing this! I always analyze my videos and ask myself, How did this one perform? Some will get great reach, others won’t.

But that’s why you iterate. You test different hooks, different structures, and eventually, you’ll find the ones that work best.

And when you find a winning format, replicate it!

Sheri Otto (21:52.556)

Use the same hook format, the same text strategy, and keep testing.

There’s no silver bullet, but these tactics will get you closer to increasing reach.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:02.185)

Love that! So helpful.

Now, for people listening who love these insights but feel overwhelmed—what’s the first step to getting started?

Sheri Otto (22:17.578)

Okay, I’ll break it down into steps because I love concrete action plans.

1. Recognize that you’re an expert.
   
   
   • You already have valuable insights that people need to hear.
2. Start capturing your thoughts.
   
   
   • Use a voice recorder, notes app, or Otter.ai to speak your ideas—don’t overthink it.
3. Block time on your calendar.
   
   
   • Dedicate time to talk through three key topics or questions your audience has.
4. Use ChatGPT to structure your content.
   
   
   • Ask it to format your notes into bulleted takeaways, a strong hook, and a CTA.
5. Batch your videos.
   
   
   • Don’t just film one—film at least three at a time.
   • If you’ve been doing this for a while, aim for six.
6. Keep it short and authentic.
   
   
   • No fancy editing. No overthinking. Just be real.
7. Schedule your content.
   
   
   • Once it's ready, schedule it so it goes out consistently.

And that’s it!

For example, while we’re recording this podcast, I have a pre-scheduled video going live—I don’t even have to think about it.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (24:31.165)

This is so helpful, Sheri!

How can people connect with you and learn more?

Sheri Otto (24:40.558)

Yeah! You can find me on LinkedIn—just search Sheri Otto.

Or visit my website: growthlanestrategies.com.

There, you’ll find free resources, client case studies, and videos with even more tips.

I also offer free growth plan sessions, so if you want to go deeper, check that out!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:10.185)

Amazing. Thank you so much, Sheri—I learned a ton today.

I’d love to have you back on the show in the future!

Sheri Otto (25:21.272)

Thank you, Kerry! It was a pleasure to be here.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:23.818)

Thank you.

Kerry Curran, RBMA:

Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. If you're struggling with flat or slowing revenue growth, you're not alone. That's why Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, brings you expert insights, actionable strategies, and real world success stories to help you scale faster. If you're serious about revenue growth, hit follow, subscribe, and drop a five star rating today. It helps us keep the game changing content coming.

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Hi there, I'm Kerry Curran, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, where we discuss smart strategies that drive revenue growth.

In this episode, titled Mastering Search Intelligence: Ranking Strategies Across Social, AI, Voice, and Video, I'm joined by Melíssa Harden, VP of Search Intelligence at Digitas.

Melíssa and I discuss how search behavior has expanded far beyond Google. Today, brands must master ranking strategies across platforms—from TikTok to Amazon, from ChatGPT to Perplexity, as well as voice search and video content.

This episode offers a forward-looking guide for marketers to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape while driving revenue growth. Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.155)

Welcome, Melíssa! Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Melíssa Harden (00:07.118)

Yeah, thank you so much, Kerry. My name is Melíssa Harden, and I am the VP of Search Intelligence at Digitas in the U.S. I have an extensive background in SEO and digital marketing. I swear I’m still young, but I’m approaching 18 years in the industry!

My experience spans a variety of sectors. I worked at Meredith in the publications space when commerce publishing was just taking off. I’ve also been part of the startup world in the tech industry and have done significant work in commerce and retail.

I’ve had the opportunity to experience search from multiple perspectives—whether at scale or in unique B2B applications. I’ve been tracking Google’s evolution for a long time, analyzing and dissecting changes to understand where search is heading.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:11.446)

Well, I’m really excited to have you on! To start, I think your role is a testament to the importance of search—it’s impressive that you have a search intelligence title. Can you share more about what that entails?

Melíssa Harden (01:30.722)

Yeah, great question! Search intelligence isn’t something you typically see when looking for an SEO role. It’s more about understanding the current state of search and how multiple factors are converging at once.

When people hear SEO, they often think only of Google. One of the key messages I try to evangelize is that search is a behavior, and it happens across every platform.

At Digitas, we focus on emerging search trends—not just Google and its market share, but also TikTok search, emerging search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT, and how users search within Amazon or Walmart. All of these platforms shape how people discover information.

Winning in search today requires more than just technical SEO or content SEO. Brands need to consider their audience, branding, social strategy, CRM, and customer loyalty programs—all of which impact search rankings and visibility.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:54.634)

Absolutely. I started my digital marketing career as an SEO manager back when title tags and descriptions were the most important factors—way back in the aughts! It’s fascinating how search has evolved.

You touched on how consumer search behavior is shifting across multiple platforms. Can you dive deeper into the behavioral trends you’re seeing and how they’re driving platform innovation?

Melíssa Harden (03:30.018)

Definitely. About three years ago, search behavior started expanding beyond Google in a significant way. TikTok was one of the first platforms to challenge Google in terms of search behavior.

Platforms like Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube became search destinations because users preferred their content formats. Instead of clicking on a webpage in Google, users could watch short-form videos on TikTok, create vision boards on Pinterest, or find in-depth video content on YouTube.

This shift forced platforms like TikTok to evolve into search engines, even though that wasn’t their original intent. Users started treating them like search engines, which meant these platforms had to adjust their algorithms and product teams had to rethink their approach.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:40.706)

That makes a lot of sense. Amazon is another example—it’s now the #1 platform for product discovery. Nobody browses Amazon; everyone goes straight to the search bar.

How do you see AI-driven search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity fitting into this evolution?

Melíssa Harden (07:21.026)

It’s the same pattern we saw with TikTok—AI platforms weren’t originally built to be search engines, but user behavior is forcing them to become one.

ChatGPT was initially launched to assist with productivity and content generation, but users started asking it questions like they would on Google. The challenge was that early versions of ChatGPT only had data up until 2021.

Now, OpenAI has integrated real-time search capabilities, using Bing’s search data. They initially planned to launch “Search GPT” separately but quickly realized people don’t want to switch between two platforms. So now, ChatGPT merges AI-driven responses with live web search results.

Meanwhile, Perplexity has become an AI-powered search engine with a different approach. Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity doesn’t have a direct Google partnership, but its top results often align with Google’s top 10 rankings. It also includes citations and links, making it a more transparent search experience than some AI platforms that just generate answers without crediting sources.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:48.938)

That’s fascinating! And you mentioned that Perplexity is growing at a rapid rate. Tell us more about that.

Melíssa Harden (10:55.342)

Yes! I didn’t run the data myself, but I’ve seen reports that Perplexity is growing at 70% month-over-month. That’s huge. For comparison, ChatGPT is growing around 40-45% per month, which is still impressive.

If this trajectory continues, projections suggest ChatGPT could rival Google in four years. That might seem like a long time, but in tech evolution, four years is nothing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:24.372)

That’s a big shift for marketers. How should brands and agencies prepare for these changes?

Melíssa Harden (12:38.850)

It comes down to knowing your audience. This sounds like a marketing cliché, but many brands think they know their audience when they actually don’t.

Audiences behave differently on different platforms. What works on Google isn’t the same as what works on TikTok, Amazon, or AI-driven platforms. Also, authenticity is more critical than ever. With AI-generated content flooding the internet, consumers are questioning what’s real. Brands need to be transparent, show their people, and engage in meaningful ways.

Google and AI search engines now factor in brand authority, engagement, and user experience—it’s not just about keywords anymore. Social signals, digital PR, and content engagement all contribute to rankings.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:42.452)

I love that. A lot of the brand strategy work I’ve been doing lately focuses on authenticity and audience connection. It’s a lot to think about, but starting with the audience is the right foundation.

Melíssa, any final tips or advice?

Melíssa Harden (20:13.786)

Yes—stay informed and embrace change. This moment reminds me of the late 1990s, when businesses still relied on Yellow Pages ads, unsure about the internet’s potential.

Today, we’re at another turning point with AI-driven search. It will be bumpy for the next few years, but brands that adapt and integrate their marketing efforts across channels will win.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (21:08.884)

That’s such great advice. Before we wrap up, tell everyone where they can follow your insights and content.

Melíssa Harden (21:30.530)

For professional inquiries, you can reach me at Melíssa.harden@digitas.com.

For industry insights, my husband and I started a YouTube podcast called The Search Bar—you can find us at Harden Search Bar on YouTube. Instead of just discussing search over dinner, we decided to put some mics in front of us!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (22:16.106)

That’s awesome! We’ll link to everything in the show notes. Melíssa, thank you so much—this was fantastic. Looking forward to seeing you next week!

Melíssa Harden (22:28.760)

Same here! Thanks, Kerry.

Flat or slowing revenue? Let’s fix that—fast.
Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast gives you proven plays, sharp insights, and “steal-this-today” tactics to power your revenue engine.

🎧 Follow on Apple, Spotify, YouTube
⭐ Rate 5 stars if these insights move your metrics
📅 Fresh episodes drop often—don’t miss a pipeline-popping idea