What Actually Matters in B2B Marketing After AI
Questions we will cover:
How has AI changed the way you approach marketing?
We’ll open by exploring how AI is reshaping day-to-day marketing work, from content and targeting to measurement and personalisation, to understand how each of you or your teams are experiencing this shift in practice.Historically, how do you balance demand creation and demand capture (top and bottom of the funnel activities)? How are AI and personalisation at scale influencing this balance?
This will look at how you manage the tension between long-term brand and short-term pipeline, and whether AI-driven targeting is changing where marketers invest their focus.If AI can now do most of what marketers once did to reach, engage, and convert customers, what’s the role of a brand in this new world? Do we still need to care about branding, or should we rethink our entire go-to-market approach from the ground up?
Here we’ll explore how brand identity and emotional connection evolve when technology handles much of the execution, and whether creativity, story, and empathy still matter as differentiators.What new skills and mindsets will marketers need to stay relevant by 2030?
To close, we’ll look ahead at how the role of marketers is changing, from strategic leadership to creative experimentation, and what capabilities will define success in the next decade.
Guests
• Dr. Rashmi Datta DeMarzi, Principal - Global Channel Initiatives and Optimization at Workday; Associate Professor at Columbia University
• Lisa Bonanno, Revenue and customer-focused marketing executive with 20+ years of experience
• Ander Frischer, SEO and AEO Leader at Gong
Transcript
Joaquin Dominguez (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing Futures. Today we are diving into one of the most important shifts happening in our industry, B2B go-to-market in the AI era. AI is not just another tool in the stack, it's fundamentally changing how buyers discover, evaluate, and engage with companies. From content creation and search behavior to measurement and team structures, the traditional GTM playbook.
is being redefined in real time in this episode we'll explore how marketing leaders are adapting to these changes what's breaking in current strategies and what needs to evolve to stay effective but before we jump into discussion i'd love for our guests to introduce themselves and share a bit about their background and current focus so lisa maybe would you like to
Lisa Bonanno (00:52)
Hi,
Joaquin Dominguez (00:52)
start? welcome
Lisa Bonanno (00:53)
everyone. So happy to be here. Lisa Bonanno. I have 25 years in B2B marketing in the tech sector and really looking forward to a great conversation.
Joaquin Dominguez (01:04)
Awesome, thank you so much, Ziza. Welcome. Rashmi, welcome.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (01:07)
Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here as well. I consider myself a scholar practitioner. I've worked in B2B, GTM and marketing. I'm a career marketer. And I am also an adjunct faculty in marketing at Columbia University SPS and the University of the Cumberlands. So really excited to have this discussion with this amazing group today.
Joaquin Dominguez (01:30)
Welcome, thank you so much and under welcome
Ander (01:32)
Yeah, it's nice to meet the fellow guests on the podcast and Joaquin, thank you for having us on. My name is Andrew Frisher. I've been doing SEO in one form or another for the past 12, 15 years, depending on how you want to look at it. And I've been focused in B2B most of that time. Currently, I am working at Gong and leading our SEO and AEO efforts there as well.
Joaquin Dominguez (01:53)
Really interesting. Thank you. Thank you so much for those great introductions. Let's start with the big picture, right? AI is already reshaping how marketing teams operate day to day from content production to targeting measurement. are the most meaningful changes you're seeing in how B2B companies approach go-to-market today? And where is AI generally adding value versus where it might be over hype?
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (02:21)
I think I can get us started and we can all contribute to the discussion. But I think what's happening is that there's a lot of rigor around using AI in marketing operations. And one of the key reasons for that is the scale that it offers, which I think is not overhyped. I think it's making us a lot more efficient and faster in getting campaigns out in market.
and also producing content at scale. But I think that's essentially the content production piece is where we need to be a little more cautious because there definitely is an over saturation when it comes to messages and a lot of generic content that's out there. really, you know, that human element and that personalization that we talk about is getting diluted in the mix. And I think those are two.
dichotomous aspects of AI application that we are seeing more and more today.
Ander (03:13)
I would agree with that. think that one of the biggest opportunities is obviously the scaling of content, but that does come with managing the risk of having all that AI can produce content out there. And at GONG we've actually created some workflows where we've been able to scale content production with human led inputs that I actually still consider to be very authentic. So there are certain ways around it. But the other thing that I think about when I think of how AI is reshaping marketing and reshaping the day to day.
Is it's changing a lot of the value that we as individual marketers can bring to the table. Whereas before there was a lot of value I find placed on how much can we get done in a certain amount of time? And what AI is allowing us to do now is really double down on the ideas that are really working. So we can spend our time as humans with the context that we have about our industry and about our company and.
come up with these great ideas that we can then use AI to execute and scale.
Lisa Bonanno (04:11)
That's what I'm seeing, Andrew. I'm seeing more of a quicker iteration of what's working and then to your point at scale, right? So it's like, how do we bring together our persona information, our content bytes, what we know about the buying behavior or what's been working so far, and then give a good prompt that can then tell us
what kind of content to be putting in front of this person or this account at this time. And then you get you refine it right as you go. So as things are proving to be more successful, you kind of add that into the recipe and is constantly kind of learning and improving like a flywheel on its own, which I think is fascinating. I think the buying behavior
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (04:56)
Absolutely.
Lisa Bonanno (04:57)
is in marketing, we thought of it as linear, right? You do this and then you do this and then you do this.
And I think AI is completely changing that on its side and allowing us to think about all the different places that our prospects and customers are natively going and how can we show up and kind of meet them there with the right piece of content at the right time for where they are in their journey, right? So it's, I'm Italian, so I talk about recipes a lot, but like it changes the recipe, right? And it's like, you know, different ingredients.
Joaquin Dominguez (05:28)
I would love to come back to that nonlinear behavior in a second. But before we
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (05:32)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (05:32)
get into that, I would love to come back to producing content at scale. And I was listening to a podcast this morning, Neil Patel's podcast. I don't know if you follow Neil Patel. I really
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (05:42)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (05:43)
like his podcast, by the way.
And they were analyzing Alexander's Hermosus content strategy. I don't know if you know Alexander Hermosus, but he's really popular in the startup world, creating enterprises, and he has millions of followers on YouTube. he was produced, they were analyzing his content production on YouTube, and he's publishing more than 100 videos a day.
in a period of like 10 hours. it's like 10, 20 videos per hour. And basically are all of them generated by AI, however, from a human-led input. So he's recording some workshops and then he's editing every single part of the video, like the hooks, everything. I would love to know, what are your thoughts on that?
What are the risks? Because you, you mentioned Rashmi at the beginning that we need to be cautious
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (06:38)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (06:39)
with content created at scale with AI. are your thoughts on strategy like that, for example?
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (06:43)
I think that kind of
approach, I would be candid in saying, is probably not well thought through. Because what AI is doing, to Anders' point, is giving us a lot of time back to reinvest in understanding our users, consumers, prospects better, but also identifying what content, what channels resonate most. And so just because we can, and therefore we must,
put out content there is probably not the best approach. And I'm seeing this with no conscious evidence of how these videos are performing, but also how much time users are spending consuming this content. So I think with having the ability to scale as fast as we can, it is also a responsibility and an onus on the marketer to understand.
you know what the message is. I don't think the vision should get diluted at the cost of our ability to do things faster. think vision today is much more critical than anything or anytime before. It's always been critical, your vision and vision and mission for a brand and a company. But today it's much more important to hold that central to everything that we do because otherwise we stray in and you know our ability to scale would take away from us.
the purpose and why, the why behind the things that we do.
Joaquin Dominguez (08:02)
the author's mission was to put his message across and if in doing so you need to tweak the algorithm somehow and find a way of putting your message out there and show your videos to as many...
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (08:17)
So here's the thing, right? Are
we trying to the algorithm by frequency, or are we trying to change the algorithm by sentiment tracking? Right?
Joaquin Dominguez (08:27)
Okay.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (08:27)
The sentiment matters as much as volume does. And I think it's important to track that.
Lisa Bonanno (08:32)
And I consistency,
Joaquin Dominguez (08:32)
I like that.
Lisa Bonanno (08:33)
I think it's having the same message very consistently also wins out. So I think we're saying how content for content sake or content for volume sake isn't
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (08:43)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (08:44)
always the winning approach. But if the content is meeting an end need and we know the algorithms love a good video, I mean, it just does. And so
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (08:52)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (08:52)
how do you take existing content and maybe, actually, I think we were talking about this before. It's like,
OK, you could do a webinar and now you have an asset and then from that asset, you can pull out sub assets and have it work for you in this modular way. And so that's That's a scale as opposed to needing 100 videos in 10 minutes. Right. So it's like, and where does this where does this asset fall into the buyer's journey and for and for who who we see consuming it. And so you kind of think about filling out almost like a matrix.
you know, of
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (09:25)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (09:26)
your people and their journey and the asset chunks that we need to kind of tell the ROI and tell the story across the, you know, consideration buying. And then it may be we need a thousand pieces of video. You it may that may be part
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (09:39)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (09:40)
of the but I question that
too. Andrew, you had a thought.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (09:42)
Yeah, the science behind
it matters. Yeah.
Ander (09:45)
I think
the word that I always think of when we think about, think about quality content and balancing that quality content with
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (09:51)
Mm-hmm.
Ander (09:52)
retail is authenticity. Are you creating
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (09:54)
Yeah.
Ander (09:55)
content that is authentic to who your brand is, is going to come across or I shouldn't even say come across, is actually going to be authentically valuable for your audience. And I, there's another aspect of producing
hundred pieces of content, especially within a large enterprise, where at the end of the day, if content appears on your website and there is something there that might violate some legal component or, you know, might spill some secret sauce or maybe, you know, any sort of content that says something that maybe we don't want to say. Ultimately, at the end of the day, there is going to be a human on the hook for that. And so.
Reviewing all of that content and really applying that human QA in a meaningful and thoughtful way is very important for preserving that authenticity and making sure that the content is doing its job in the way that you want
Lisa Bonanno (10:47)
I think this is what's so fascinating. It's like, so here we are in an AI era and we're using tools to help generate content. And yet at the same time, we're saying the most valuable content is content in other people's words, right? So you think about like the G2s
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (11:04)
Yes.
Lisa Bonanno (11:05)
and the Reddits and...
all these other review sites. So using humans' words to
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (11:12)
in the
Lisa Bonanno (11:12)
describe their experience or the solution or the benefit is really the ringleader of the algorithm. So I almost think it's less about maybe even writing the smartest prompt to generate a widget of content and maybe it's how do you inspire your customers to help sell more product for you, you know?
have them become your evangelists, have them write those reviews and take the phone call and put a social post out there. I was just reading this little blurb about how the C-suite is being encouraged to do more free-form social posts, right, on their own, in their own words to kind of talk about their experience at the organization and their solutions and, you know, creating heroes out of their customers.
and it kind of just helps humanize the customer, or I'm sorry, humanize the organization and bring them forward. So I just think it's almost ironic, right? Like the two sides of this of needing human in the loop and how it's even higher in the picking order, but still needing to kind of execute stuff at scale.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (12:14)
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I totally agree on the user-generated content piece and inspiring customers to become advocates, even past users, I might say. It's become more critical. And that's where EEO is pulling from in terms of sources. think what I'll
also add is that another thing that AI is helping us do really well is read signals and act on them very fast, right? So I think to your point, Lisa, you know, the recipe and getting the recipe is changing real fast. And it's going to be so critical to understand where different types or ingredients fit in.
Right? So the AI generated content pieces, including a more humanized, authentic version of what our brand should sound like alongside user generated content, where does it fall in that matrix? you know, the funnel structure that is, I don't know if it still exists, it's definitely very dynamic than it's been in the past. So really, you know, figuring out the
the ingredients and where they fit and what the right mix is for your brand and the channel that we, or channels we're using to go to market is becoming so much more critical. And that's where I think we are spending a lot of our time as well at work figuring that out.
Lisa Bonanno (13:35)
Well, you mentioned the funnel. Sorry, go ahead, Andrew.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (13:37)
Mm-hmm.
Ander (13:38)
no, go ahead, Lisa.
Lisa Bonanno (13:39)
I was just going to say, I don't think anyone has remastered the new funnel. if they have, I would love to have a chat with them because I just feel like it's so iterative
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (13:48)
Yeah
Lisa Bonanno (13:49)
and every company is trying to take different inputs of what's working, what isn't, and trying to figure out how it kind of plays down. I mean, at the end of the day, you still need the booking, right? You still need the revenue.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (13:59)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (14:00)
And so there's a set of actions that you're going to have to follow to kind of get the account warmed up, the human warmed up.
And those actions may be different depending on the ASP, the persona, all the things, all the variables. I think what we're talking about is that we're able to listen more through the awareness and consideration stage than ever before to kind
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (14:23)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Bonanno (14:24)
of see what accounts are bubbling up faster than others, which people within those accounts are showing signs of ingesting information that may
show us that they're more likely to buy sooner than later, right? And kind of pull these folks forward. So it's almost like the funnel is still there. And yes, it is still linear, but the actions happening at the top are kind of a little bit more sporadic and crazy. But there is a moment where we're going to say, you're warm, right? And we're going to bring you over and take you down the bottom of the funnel.
And I would say, know, marketing's job hasn't doesn't stop there. It needs to really continue down the bottom in partnership with sales so that, you know, even though there might be an opportunity on the record, you know, marketing should still be going into that account with appropriate content to kind of continue to warm them down to the close. So, yeah, I think it's a it's definitely a shifting.
funnel, but I think the funnel is still there and people are just trying to figure it out.
Ander (15:24)
I was going to say one of the interesting things, speaking of the funnel is there's also this visibility gap that we do not, that is not being covered at the moment. And I'm not sure how we will cover it of understanding how a late stage prospect, someone who already has a statement of work or a proposal or whatever it might be in front of them, how they are using LLMs to evaluate the solution that you are offering. We don't really have any data.
that tells us exactly how they're doing that. But anecdotally, I've heard stories of seven figure deals being closed because of the research that executives are doing within an LLM. And that's something that we just don't really understand. But to your point, Lisa, that's why we as marketers have to pay attention to that bottom of the funnel as well and continue making sure that that content is available.
Lisa Bonanno (16:15)
And I think you hit it on the head. So if they're going to LLMs, not just in the beginning, but all the way through, then we need to make sure that we're showing up in whatever that query is. So we need to make sure, and Anders, this is your background, right? It's like, how do we structure our content on our website in such a way that if there's a side-by-side comparison, we're being included in that side-by-side comparison, or what's the FAQ that needs to roll up so that we are one, at the table, and then two, winning the day, right?
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (16:43)
Yeah, and I'll also add that it's not just about how the brand shows up or how we show up on our website. I think it's a lot more about corroboration through and through, awareness through closing, where, know, LLMs are constantly pulling from different sources that see the same thing. So the principle of corroboration, essentially, right? So they're going to be, if your website is seeing the same thing as G2 and Captera,
That's what's going to show up in the results. So it's so much more important to really create that surround sound of everything that the brand wants to say, but having users say it and other credible sources like analysts replicate the same thing and publishers so that that's what essentially feeds the LLM models.
And going back to content, didn't mean to digress, but I think one really cool thing that we were able to do with AI, especially in the context of content, is that keeping content fresher and really pulling it down or creating that, you know, the funnel effect, which a lot of time just sits in the marketer's head and doesn't really exist in paper, or really creating that journey has become so much more easier.
So you're keeping content fresh, but you're also driving people down at the same time by giving them prompts based off of signals that they're displaying in real time. I think that's something that's that's happening that we didn't have before. And I think it'll lend to the funnel structure much more robustly in years, months, weeks, whatever. You never know how this thing progresses.
Ander (18:20)
Thank you.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (18:21)
But it'll definitely lend more to a more formal funnel structure, I think.
Lisa Bonanno (18:26)
I think
marketers are going to be asked, if they're not already, to be thinking about
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (18:31)
May.
Lisa Bonanno (18:32)
setting up those systems. So maybe
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (18:34)
you
Lisa Bonanno (18:35)
the system might replace campaign at one point, but it's almost like, so what signals are we going to listen for, to your point, Rashmi? And then what's our system to kind of support that signal? And it will include
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (18:47)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (18:47)
all the different channels that are appropriate. But you're kind of creating the work stream.
and then monitoring the workstream and then iteratively improving that workstream. So it's a little bit of a different mind shift too that I think is happening. And when we say signals, like we sit here and we sound all smart, but like there's so much tech debt at these companies
Joaquin Dominguez (19:09)
Thank
Lisa Bonanno (19:10)
and right, finding the data to actually cue off of, like it's order of operations. I mean, you can't even think about building
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:17)
you
Lisa Bonanno (19:18)
the system until you're thinking about
What's my data input to kind of cue off of and like have a smart system to even build?
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:25)
Yeah,
Ander (19:26)
And also with how
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:26)
absolutely.
Ander (19:26)
fast things
are moving right now, as soon as one new AI oriented strategy or tactic, as soon as we feel like we have one of those down, there's another thing that's happening. You know,
so
Lisa Bonanno (19:37)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:37)
Yeah.
Ander (19:37)
speed at which there's this acceleration happening with what we're able to do as marketers that I think most of us can agree sometimes feels a little hard to keep up with, you know, what is
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:47)
absolutely.
Ander (19:48)
the most important thing to be doing? Where should we be spending our time when there's
100, you know, shiny objects showing up on LinkedIn every day.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (19:55)
There is definitely a lot of noise. And I think personally, the way I'm trying to break through it is to see what gets me the most bang for my time. So.
without naming names, like if I have any favorites that I like to go to, whether I have favorites for different things. So content creation, you my certain model is trained to deliver on that. Or campaign optimization, we have a separate tool that, you know, I lean on more. I think that's how I'm evaluating tools that I want to spend my time in, where I know exactly what I get out of these tools. But also, what's the best use of
What's the best use of my time in that sense?
Ander (20:33)
I think that the multi-model
Joaquin Dominguez (20:33)
No, no, Go ahead.
Ander (20:35)
approach is actually very important is understanding if you're using LLMs to scale a bunch of your work or you're using
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (20:37)
Mm-hmm.
Ander (20:40)
tools that are leveraging LLMs, when is Claude appropriate versus OpenAI versus any of the other tools out there.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (20:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. you know, because, like I said, I'm a scholar practitioner. So what's more important as a practitioner versus a scholar, right? Like there's different tools
Lisa Bonanno (20:58)
you
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (20:59)
that work best in different environments. you know, not just utilizing them for my personal use and at work on the day-to-day, but also educating the next generation of marketing leaders on
how they should be approaching and thinking about some of these things and some of these tools without completely getting overwhelmed. Because sometimes in the classroom, Excel is hard enough to get around and get behind. so introducing so many different tools can only add to a lot of confusion.
Lisa Bonanno (21:31)
Well, it's funny, we started the conversation around like, you know, there's, there's so much AI tools out there to use and every company seems
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (21:37)
Mm.
Lisa Bonanno (21:38)
to have an AI mandate to, you know, get smart about AI and no one really understands what that means. And it can feel a little bit like a frenzy, you know, I got to get some AI. I feel like calling it like, you know, the Facebook, you know, it's like the AI, we got to get the AI like everyone's just, you know, we don't even know what we're saying, but we're saying it to be cool and relevant. And
I think it goes back to the content question. It's like, what problem are we trying to solve? Could AI solve this better for us? Is there a tool out there today
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (22:06)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Bonanno (22:07)
that I should explore to help solve this problem? And if like, no, no, no, then keep going. You really have to think about, from a very strategic perspective, what problem are we hoping to overcome and solve? And is there an AI tool that could help us do this better, quicker, more effective?
so on and so forth. And yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (22:25)
Exactly. What's role of brands in this context,
right? Because if everyone can create content,
Ander (22:30)
I see you, I see
Joaquin Dominguez (22:31)
personalised messaging, scale distribution, there is a lot of saturation, of course, right? Even when we want to pick the right AI tool, there is saturation. Imagine creating content with these tools. There's even more. So what
Lisa Bonanno (22:44)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (22:45)
does the role of a brand in this environment? Is it becoming more important as a signal of trust and differentiation or...
Is it evolving into something totally different?
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (22:56)
I think it's so critical
Ander (22:57)
I for...
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (22:58)
to humanize the brand.
Ander (22:59)
part.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (23:00)
again, like going back to what we started with, like it's so important for brands to appear as humans or have human qualities much more than before. And for those qualities to show up and the values to show up in real time. And not just one for the reason of humanizing the brand and driving connection.
but also because the user is evolving. Even multi-generationally, we see that different generations resonate better with different things. But millennials and Gen Zs and beyond connect more with brands that have purpose and stand for their values and are vocal in talking about those things. And so if we want to stay relevant, think creating that authenticity and human value
is going to be most critical for brands.
Ander (23:47)
One of the things that I find most interesting whenever a brand does this is when they are able to give insights about the problem they're solving through their own data set. We have something at Gong called Gong Labs, where we analyze, we analyze conversation data and other types, other revenue data points across our massive data set. And we're able to actually share things that are unique. And I think that part of doing that
is part of what's important about that is the uniqueness and the fact that it's only coming from a particular brand. So if there's a brand that has, could almost say like a moat with the types of insights that they're able to offer, I find that that's very.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (24:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (24:29)
I definitely concur
that the role of brand is even more important than ever before. your point, content is a commodity now, right? Anyone can generate it. So that's not the thing. And more important is defining what is our brand.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (24:44)
See you next time.
Lisa Bonanno (24:45)
You think about the positioning statement and the messaging architecture. It's like, how are we different?
and in driving that consistency of how your different Rashmi to your point in all the channels.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (24:57)
Yeah.
Lisa Bonanno (24:58)
Right. And so even as you think about your executive team and them going out and posting stuff, it's from the same piece of music. Right. They're all saying the same thing consistently and humanizing the experience of that brand through the same use of words. And then you think about like all the tools we have on the customer side.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (25:19)
Thank you.
Lisa Bonanno (25:21)
to really harness that communities I think are going to have or already have a great role in supporting everything we're talking about here. So having a place for customers to go and find each other and solve problems collectively and together and human to human, chat to chat, right? There's something very special about that. And I think companies that really do that well are probably going to...
have higher renewal rates and just be able to harvest the goodness through those type of channels too.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (25:55)
You know,
something comes to mind as we talk about this, Lisa, I think in marketing or in the business context, we've never considered people, whether that's when we when I say people like internal people and executives as a channel, right, as a as a forum for generating word of mouth or promotion. But we are our best advocates. And I think the storytelling aspect and extending that consistency, like you said, across
people treating them as a channel and bringing them into the fold and measuring against that is going to be key. I don't think we're thinking about that right now as marketers, but how do we evaluate word of mouth from our own people? Treating our employees as a channel is something maybe we should look at. Another aspect is, which I hate to say it because I used to hate it when senior leaders would say this,
But storytelling, storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. Like you said, using the same source, the same music to deliver the same message consistently across channels, across people, across users. I think that's the surround sound that's going to change the narrative, build the narrative, and set organizations apart from their competitors and peers.
Joaquin Dominguez (27:10)
Yeah, one thing that comes really evident, I believe in the AI era is that brand matters more than ever. When everyone can create content at scale, what really sets apart companies are the true connection they build with their audience. But at the same time, most marketing teams are still stuck in execution. They are spending time researching accounts, finding the right people, managing campaigns.
Even researching the new AI, like
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (27:40)
Yep.
Joaquin Dominguez (27:40)
the new thing. So what we are building at Adzact is a different way of working. You allocate budget and the system takes care of the rest. We find the right companies, we find the right decision makers, we run and we optimize the campaigns for you. And we combine everything back to revenue. And actually we can track...
personal level intent. So you can actually see when the people that you have been reaching through your brand activity start to show real buying signals. And that means that brand is no longer something you just hope works over time. You can see which companies and which decision makers are exposed to your campaigns and how they move from awareness to consideration. So at the end of the day, brand is
It's just not hard to justify anymore. It becomes measurable. You can tie it back to pipeline, to revenue, and you can invest more on brand. And I think the big shift here is that people spend more time focused on brand and building real connections with their consumers instead of managing campaigns or finding the new tool or tweaking the algorithm of
LinkedIn or tweaking the algorithm of YouTube and you really focus on what really matters. And with that in mind, I love to finish with one question. If you had more time to focus on brand and customers, what would you do differently and what's actually currently getting in the way?
Lisa Bonanno (29:12)
I think what's so interesting about what you just said is, know, brand has always been this soft thing. We can't measure it, right? I don't know about a PR, AR, like how do I measure the effectiveness? It just feels so soft and squishy. The CFO doesn't understand it. It's just so hard for marketers to kind of justify.
the elements needed to elevate brand. And now we're in this AI era where we're all agreeing on this panel that brand is more important than ever. And so I'm hoping that there's a shifting conversation around brand isn't about your icon or imagery. It's about these words that you're using and the feeling you're giving people when they are near your company.
And so I think what might be interesting is I'm kind of going to watch for this. mean, COVID took a turn, right? And we were not doing events. Now we're kind of back to events. And I think that in person, the face to face is going to become even more important to driving that those connections that people are dire for. At the end of the day, it's a human buying.
something from another human. are human to human. I know we talk about B to B, B to C, right? We're B to H. We're like, you know, or even H to H.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (30:29)
Yes.
Lisa Bonanno (30:30)
We're human to human. And people want to know that they're buying from another good human that's going to have their back and take care of them. They're not going to lose their job because they bought their thing and they're going to be a partner in their growth and their success. And that comes from building those relationships from the moment they kind of come over to your front door, you know, all the way through to them becoming an advocacy and renewing and
buy more from you. So I think a little bit of a shift, not that digital is going anywhere. I digital is still in the recipe,
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (30:58)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Bonanno (30:58)
but I think a little bit more face-to-face might be taking a share of the budget.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (31:03)
I love that direction. And for years, think B2B marketers have struggled with how to bring emotion into the picture. That's why we try to mimic consumer marketing or see how, because it's easier to do that, to lead with emotions on the B2C side. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves and how we are able to do that more with
with the eye and with the noise that it creates. So really looking forward to seeing how that evolution happens and how, you know, we kind of, we lead with emotions a little more. And I think we've played safe for a really long time on the B2B side. I think it's now becoming okay to really say the things that, or stand for what we believe in.
So we'll see how that goes. But I totally agree that in-person is going to be very, critical in the next couple of months and years.
Ander (32:02)
And one thing I think is also important with digital still being obviously a very important factor in this H2H selling is that the siloed approach to different marketing channels really needs to be broken down because at the end of the day, your brand is going to be bigger than the sum of its parts. And it's not just about what you have on your website and what you have happening on your organic social and paid search and all of your other channels. It's how all of these things are working.
working together. And I think that a change that is necessary for marketers to really stay relevant is to think cross-functionally and for people who are
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (32:40)
Mm-hmm.
Ander (32:41)
individual contributors to really think outside of the channel that they work in and think about how the work they're doing applies to the collective picture of the brand and making the brand authentic and human.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (32:53)
Absolutely agreed.
Lisa Bonanno (32:55)
That's a good point.
I wonder if we're going to see organizational structures start to shift too. You know, a little bit less of functional experts and a little bit more of system experts. Or I've even heard the term like a revenue pod, right? We're all kind of working together
Ander (33:09)
Thank
Lisa Bonanno (33:10)
to kind of move through the
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (33:13)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Bonanno (33:14)
buying journey. So I'm kind of watching that too, to kind of see how...
where we put the people in our teams needs to be adjusted as well.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (33:22)
Absolutely, definitely seeing the role of marketing demand generation and even brand evolve like within our own ecosystem. I think we are constantly trying to pull marketers outside of just their piece of the pie because you the pie is not that big and we it's a collective pie. Everyone owns it. And I think getting marketers out of that mindset of this is my
like healthcare is all I focus on or tech as an industry is all I focus on and seeing their collective impact on the business and across channels and really getting a better understanding of how do we really go to market and how do the things that I do influence everything that everyone else is doing. Basically, if you look at Personas, we are all basically talking to the same account, like different people within the same account. And so,
removing that sense of ownership a little bit and making it a collective is definitely an evolution that I'm already seeing in motion.
Joaquin Dominguez (34:20)
Exactly. And if you analyze all the good brands and most of them are B2C brands, they have a great culture behind. They have an organizational culture and leadership that they have been building for decades. And probably in B2B, we will need to start doing the same and start being less boring and being more emotional.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (34:41)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (34:41)
But you don't just switch an enterprise or organization.
to be fun the day after because you want to be fun. You need to changing things from the top, believe.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (34:54)
Yeah.
Joaquin Dominguez (34:55)
Believing in your vision and changing your culture and the way you work with employees, with providers, procurement, everything needs to change if you want to transmit a new brand to consumers. At the end of the day, brand is holistic, in my opinion.
Lisa Bonanno (35:11)
Yeah, it's like taking some bold strokes and putting yourself out there and being a little vulnerable. you know, I
Joaquin Dominguez (35:18)
Exactly.
Lisa Bonanno (35:19)
was reading it was like, you know, what was it? Nike and Apple do this really well. They're not the cheapest and they're not, you know, well, we could say they're some of the fastest, but people are attracted to them. Right. There's
Joaquin Dominguez (35:34)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Bonanno (35:34)
this magnetism to those two brands.
And so we have to ask ourselves, why, what are they doing? And how could that essence be replicated on the B2B side where people are just drawn to what you're offering, how you're offering it, how you're treating your customers, whatever it is that your brand stands for. And, you know.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (35:52)
I think it starts with culture
because, know, when I'll be honest, like just across the B2B in, I guess, ecosystem companies that have strong cultures where employees are strong advocates of the brand and of the organization, like they automatically stand out. They don't even have to invest in.
in marketing or making themselves look good because, you know, the biggest cheerleaders do that for them. The customers do that for them. And I think, you know, just going back to everything that we've said so far, like humanizing, authenticity, vulnerability of brands, think everything stems from culture and also fun. Fun is something that we miss, right? Fun starts at the top. So let's get our C-suite to become more fun and embrace fun as a core value.
Ander (36:40)
also having that consistently across all of your channels, whether it's out of
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (36:44)
Absolutely.
Ander (36:45)
home or digital or in person, whatever it might be. I kind of joke when I say SEO doesn't stand for search engine optimization everywhere, it stands for search everywhere optimization. And having that consistency to risk
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (36:55)
Yep.
Ander (36:56)
that fun across everywhere is really important. And that's what helps get it done.
Dr. Rashmi DeMarzi (37:00)
Love that.
Joaquin Dominguez (37:01)
All right, well, this has been a really insightful discussion. Thank you all for sharing your thoughtful perspectives on this topic. It's clear that we are in the middle of a fundamental shift in how B2B marketing works. AI is changing a lot of things, but if anything, it's reinforcing the importance of brand trust and truly understanding your customer.
Thank you again, Rashmi, Lisa, Ander for joining us today and for everyone listening. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe and share it with your team. We'll see you in the next episode of B2B Marketing Futures.
