How many times, B2B marketers, have you sat on a pipeline call reviewing open opportunities and heard someone comment on how long an opp has been open and what can be done to move it along? Quite a few times, no doubt. Outreach from the sales rep, an open opportunity nurture sequence, and even executive outreach are all possible solutions. But wouldn’t it be better to avoid the problem to begin with? In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we talk with Trinity Nguyen, VP of Marketing at UserGems,about her team’s approach to closing deals faster. And it relies on a rather old tactic from the B2B marketing toolbox – personas. Trinity’s team discovered that when three personas were involved in the buying process,her company closed more sales. The personas were dubbed “The Three Musketeers,” and today Trinity and her team strive to marketo to these roles to get them involved as early in the process as possible. Also on this episode, we’ll talk about Trinity’s hopes for the second half of 2023, the most important relationship she has in her organization as a marketer, and Trinity’s favorite tools.

Because we live in a world surrounded by technology, we often equate innovation with devices and software. But innovation is about taking a different approach to just about anything. If you can make something faster, more efficient, and more productive, you’re innovating. During times of economic uncertainty, innovation and experimentation are often cast aside in favor of short-term returns. Testing out new systems and approaches carries risk, and companies and their employees have a lower tolerance for risk during a slow economy. If you slow your pace of innovation too much, however, you can find yourself at a disadvantage when things pick up. In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Jonathan Sedger, DIrector of Innovation and Partnerships at B2B marketing agency Twogether, talks about how B2B marketers can use innovation to improve outcomes for their customers and prospects and help achieve goals quickly and efficiently. We’ll also touch on creating a culture and frameworks for innovation and experimentation, Jonathan’s favorite tools, and more.

Resource constraints are hitting B2B marketers hard. The teams are often smaller than they were two years ago. The tools are fewer. But the goals are often headed in the other direction. Many marketers are tired of hearing “Do more with less.” And a better approach to economic uncertainty might be rethinking what your company is doing to see if it still makes sense. That’s true in both your messaging, where prospects are in a different reality than they were two years ago, and in your tactics. In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking with Ting Ting Luo, VP of Marketing at Orum, a sales tech company that aims to make sales calls as efficient as email. Among the topics we discuss: Ting Ting’s career journey from management consulting in one economic downturn to VP of marketing in another; building the marketing team at Orum from the ground up, and the challenges her team faces when marketing to prospects whose tech investments are under increasing scrutiny from executives. Episode Guide 2:40: How did beginning her career during the 2008-2009 downturn impact Ting Ting’s career journey? 5:00: Does the volume of information at people’s fingertips help or hamper their outreach efforts? 9:19: How the new dynamics of tech purchases change the sales-marketing dynamic. 12:00: How macroeconomic conditions are affecting the buyers’ journey. 14:49: How Ting Ting built her marketing team at Orum. 17:30: What are the most significant challenges facing Ting Ting and her team? 21:05: What are Ting Ting’s favorite tools?

The modern marketing and sales organization often integrates several platforms to deliver a comprehensive view of prospects and customers. But when it comes to recruiting talent, the systems are often years behind what’s available to marketing and sales. Recruiters, for example, often can’t target potential employees the way their colleagues in marketing can target potential customers. Add all of this up, and it means pain points for recruiters and hiring managers. On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Sam Kuenhle, VP of Marketing at Loxo. We’re going to talk about a different approach to recruiting and hiring talent, his team’s challenges and goals, and the difference between content that matters versus content that converts.

Businesses in the technology sector understand the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) better than most. But the full scope of AI’s potential lies beyond tech, in industries that have been slower to adopt tools that can rapidly analyze data and help manage risk. The construction industry, for example, touches almost everything we do. But it’s an unlikely place to find tools like predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. But like any area of the economy, construction companies and their leaders are interested in tools that will help increase speed, better manage costs, and make more efficient use of resources.And that’s where artificial intelligence can help. Stephanie Seril is VP of Marketing at Avvir, which uses AI to help construction companies and their clients compare projects to digital twins and identify errors long before they become expensive and time-consuming to fix. RELATED EPISODE: There’s More to Generative AI Than Content Creation On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Stephanie talks about the challenges Avvir faces in its marketing, how marketing tech to an industry like construction differs from her days in Silicon Valley, and why steel-toed boots are now part of her work attire.

ChatGPT and other generative AI tools that create content are capturing a lot of attention. But content is only one application of generative AI. It can generate just about anything in terms of data. Getting AI and machine learning projects off the ground remains a significant hurdle for many businesses. One of the biggest obstacles companies face is access to the datasets they need to properly build and scale their machine learning models. Let’s say you work at a financial institution and you want to use machine learning to improve customer service or help introduce cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Because of the sensitive nature of customers’ financial information, training the tech on real data isn’t a good idea. That’s where synthetic data comes into play. MOSTLY AI generates synthetic data that looks and acts just like an organization’s real data. It can be used to train machine learning models, so they can work with seemingly real data without introducing additional risk. On this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Sabine Klisch, VP, Global Marketing at MOSTLY AI about the market for synthetic data, challenges, and goals for the year ahead.

There are some things about the art and science of media buying that haven’t changed much in recent years. But other elements of media buying are in a constant state of flux. Social media is one example. Would you have predicted even one year ago that brands would be skittish of Twitter but taking a serious look at Reddit? Jason Gladu is the president of Avani Media, a demand gen agency that specializes in working with B2B tech companies. Back in early 2021, Jason joined the B2B Nation podcast to talk about media buying strategy. The episode was so popular, we decided it was time to revisit the subject again. In this episode of the podcast, Jason guides us through the media buying landscape of 2023. This time around we’re talking about the impact of economic uncertainty, old approaches to media buying that are making a comeback, and the quest for more engagement and shorter sales cycles. Episode Guide 1:42: What has changed the most for B2B media buyers in the last two years? 4:46: What is the “temperature" of marketers and media buyers right now? 8:08: Are media buyers still setting aside precious budget for testing? 10:10: How has the media that marketers are buying changed in the past two years? 13:30: What are the most overlooked opportunities for marketers buying media today? 15:37: What are the downsides of being “safe” with your media buys? 20:05: What is Jason’s advice to marketers for the rest of 2023?

Location, location, location. That’s the age-old advice given to real estate investors. And like the age-old advice given to many areas of life and business, today it’s often tweaked just a bit. Location, location, location – and data. Today’s real estate investors and developers have access to millions of data points to help them gauge the potential of a property. That level of insight is especially helpful during times of economic uncertainty, when investments carry more risk. Max LeBlond is the Director of Marketing at Local Logic. According to his company, location impacts 48 percent of a property asset’s value. That’s why decisions fueled by location data provide a competitive advantage in today’s real estate market. In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, Max talks about the proptech market, what 2023 has in store for the Local Logic team, and more.

The pressure is on finance teams to better control spending and account for every dollar spent. And that probably doesn’t sound like a great time to be pitching new software to finance roles. But if tracking and managing an organization’s spending is the primary focus of your product, this might be your time to shine. In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we’re talking to Idan Gol, VP of Marketing at Mesh Payments. Like many marketing teams, Idan’s team is trying to convince businesses of the benefits of its platform at a time when many are working to reduce their spending. And Mesh Payments is not the only one in the increasingly crowded spend management space trying to make their case. In the episode, Idan talks about standing out in the payments and spend management space, goals for 2023, lessons from 2022, why “efficiency” will be vital to marketing in 2023, and more.