Christine Formosa, Marketing Manager at Thryv Australia and New Zealand, shares her perspective on building brands that drive meaningful growth. From customer insights and integrated campaigns to cross-functional alignment, demand generation, and AI, Christine explores how marketers can create consistent, customer-centric strategies that build trust, engagement, and lasting business impact.

Welcome to the interview series, Christine. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

Thank you for having me! I’m Christine Formosa, a Marketing Manager at Thryv Australia and New Zealand. My marketing journey began at Monash University, where I studied a double degree in Marketing and Management. I now mentor students there, which is a lovely way to give back and share my skills and journey, plus what I’ve learned along the way. After university, I joined Sensis (the business behind Australia’s Yellow Pages and White Pages) in a graduate role. Eight years later, I’m still with the business, now part of Thryv, and I’ve been fortunate to grow my career alongside its transformation.

Over that time, I’ve worked across brand marketing, go-to-market strategy, paid media, demand generation, social media, reporting, and product marketing. Working closely with product, sales, operations, IT, and marketing teams has helped me understand how those different pieces connect to deliver results and support revenue growth.

Today, my role focuses on events, partnerships, social media, brand strategy, and employee advocacy across Australia and New Zealand. I’ve also experienced the shift from working in person to being fully remote within a global organisation, which has taught me a lot about relationships, collaboration, and staying connected. I’d describe myself as a marketing generalist. I enjoy understanding the whole funnel and how different marketing disciplines work together, while staying open to whichever channels and approaches best suit the audience and business goals.

Throughout my career, I’ve actively sought opportunities to learn from experts, mentors, and peers, as well as through courses and industry events. That ongoing curiosity has helped me build a broad perspective, and it’s something I want to keep developing as I grow. My aspiration is to be a Chief Marketing Officer, leading, influencing, and ensuring marketing has a seat at the corporate table. I always make time to showcase the work and contribution of the marketing team to the business’s success, helping deliver high-performing campaigns that make an impact on customers, the business, and ROI.

How do you bring brand, content, campaigns, and events together to strengthen market presence and drive growth?

I’m a big believer that strong marketing is shaped by three things: theory, data, and the customer. Before bringing brand, content, campaigns, and events together, I start with four questions: Who is our customer? What problem are we solving? What value are we adding? And how can we demonstrate that value?

For me, theory means drawing on marketing principles and psychology to understand how people think and make decisions. Data helps us test our assumptions through industry research, customer surveys, and campaign performance. And the customer’s voice (through reviews, NPS, direct feedback, and conversations with sales) keeps us grounded in what actually matters to them.

Once that foundation is clear, each activity has a connected role. Brand builds recognition and trust, content explains our value, campaigns encourage action, and events create opportunities for personal connection. They should all reinforce the same proposition, with simple, consistent messaging adapted to the channels our customers actually use.

That takes collaboration across the whole funnel. An event, for example, shouldn’t sit in isolation. The promotion, event experience, landing page, and CRM follow-up should feel connected, with a clear next step for the customer. I’m fortunate to work with colleagues across paid media, web, CRM, and sales to bring those pieces together.

To understand whether that’s driving growth, I set clear KPIs and review points from the outset, looking at both market presence and commercial outcomes. From engagement to qualified leads, conversion, and revenue, we can track it. I’m also a big Asana fan for keeping execution organised. But just as important is the feedback loop: reviewing results, gathering input from the teams involved, and using post-campaign or post-event reviews to improve the next activity. For me, it’s about consistent execution, shared learning, and keeping the customer at the centre.

What role do customer insights and feedback play in shaping your marketing strategies and campaigns?

A lot! I’m grateful that my marketing degree at Monash had a strong focus on marketing statistics. It helped me build the habit early in my career of measuring results and demonstrating the value of what I do. That foundation has helped me make more informed decisions, build cases for trying new things (backed by data), and challenge my own assumptions. I think it’s important to separate personal preference from what the evidence and our customers are telling us, particularly in B2B software.

I use Salesforce, dashboards, and campaign reporting to understand how our marketing contributes to results. But the numbers are only part of the picture. Reviews, surveys, listening to customer calls, and reading sales notes in Salesforce help me understand the reasons behind those results: what customers need, what’s frustrating them, and what might be stopping them from taking the next step.

Those insights help shape our messaging, the content we create, and the questions we address in campaigns. If the same concern keeps coming up in customer conversations, that’s a signal to look at how clearly we’re communicating our value. Plus, working for a company that helps businesses strengthen their online presence and customer relationships, it is more important than ever that we apply that same thinking to our own marketing.

I also value feedback from colleagues, especially those speaking with customers every day. Regular catch-ups, shared ideas, and anonymous surveys all create opportunities to improve. In a remote workplace, you have to be intentional about those conversations and build enough trust for people to give honest feedback. For me, it comes down to listening, testing, and being willing to change direction when the evidence tells us we should.

I’m fortunate to have been with the company for so long and to be part of a strong team where we can share honest feedback and feel supported to take risks. Those insights are only as valuable as our willingness to act on them, try something new, learn when things don’t go to plan, and pivot when we need to.

When building a campaign, which factors influence your choice of channels and customer touchpoints?

This is one I’m extremely passionate about, because channel choices should be guided by data and an understanding of the customer. My starting point is the ideal customer profile, or ICP. A business might have several customer profiles, but for each campaign, we need to be clear about who we’re trying to reach. What’s their role? What challenges are they facing? Where do they look for information, who do they trust, and how do they make buying decisions?

It can be tempting to think we need to be everywhere. I believe we need to be intentional and focus on the channels where our customers spend time and are most receptive to our message. Using a blend of market research, customer research, and industry insights helps to inform what the right mix is.

The campaign objective and stage of the customer journey matter too. Are we building awareness, helping someone compare their options, or encouraging them to take action? Each touchpoint needs a purpose, and the budget should support the channels most likely to achieve that goal.

I also think it’s important to understand what happens between those touchpoints. Website tracking, heatmaps, customer calls, and asking people how they heard about us can help reveal where they’re engaging and where we might be losing them. I also encourage you, if you have the budget, to conduct market research or hire agencies that have the bandwidth to do this research for you. Knowledge is key.

Finally, consistency matters. I think of the familiar “rule of seven” as a reminder of the value of repeated exposure, rather than a fixed number that guarantees a purchase. For me, it’s about reaching the right people with a relevant message at the right moments, then using the results to refine the approach.

“Brand builds recognition and trust, content explains our value, campaigns encourage action, and events create opportunities for personal connection.”

Where does cross-functional alignment make the biggest difference across the marketing campaign lifecycle?

Honestly, everywhere. As I mentioned, I’m someone who isn’t just a brand marketer or a demand generation marketer. Having worked across different stages of the marketing and customer lifecycle, I believe every touchpoint needs to be consistent.

Everyone is busy, and we’re inundated with information from the internet, books, AI, Google, word of mouth, influencers, and social media. The noise is loud. So for a brand or product to cut through, it needs to be memorable and easy to understand.

That starts with a shared understanding of who we’re targeting, the problem we’re solving, and the promise we’re making. It also means being clear about who owns each stage, how leads will be followed up, and which results we’re measuring together so that shared understanding translates into action.

For me, that alignment comes through in our branding. We need consistency, a brand that evokes a feeling, and a presence where our customers are. When customers move into the research phase, the touchpoints they encounter need to provide consistent information that helps them decide which product is right for them. Ads, websites, forms, sales conversations, and expo booths all need to feel like the same brand offering the same promise or proposition.

The handovers between teams help maintain that consistency. If a campaign generates interest, does sales understand the message that brought that person in? Does the follow-up build on that conversation? Are we making the next step easy, or asking the customer to start again?

And it doesn’t stop when someone becomes a customer. Are the onboarding emails reinforcing that promise? Does the product deliver the value we communicated? Does their experience reflect the customer testimonials they’ve seen? Alignment with product and customer support teams helps make sure that promise matches the experience.

I also think alignment means sharing what we learn. Sales can tell us which questions or objections keep coming up, customer teams can highlight recurring challenges, and marketing can use those insights alongside campaign results to improve the next activity. Our job as marketers is to keep reminding ourselves who our ideal customer is and asking whether our touchpoints create a seamless experience. We also need to make sure our new campaigns and ideas feel fresh without becoming repetitive while still reflecting our brand, the core of who we are and what we do.

How do you balance long-term brand building with short-term demand generation and business goals?

This is a topic I’m quite passionate about, especially having spent three to four years in demand generation before moving into my current role with more of a brand marketing focus. I think businesses can underestimate how much short-term demand generation benefits from the brand building that has happened over time.

The balance can be tricky, particularly when there are immediate business targets to meet. Marketing leaders need to help senior stakeholders understand the value of both. Building trust, recognition, and authority takes time, but that foundation can help paid media, sales campaigns, and short-term offers resonate. I see brand and demand generation as not mutually exclusive. They are connected and complementary and work best when planned together.

For me, balancing them means being clear about what we need to deliver now, while continuing to invest in what will support future growth. That means planning for both, with objectives, budgets, and measures that reflect their different roles and timeframes.

I also think there’s a misconception that brand building has to mean big TV ads, major sponsorships, or a large budget. It can happen through consistency in flyers, social media, emails, employee advocacy, and simple activities that don’t require additional media spend. Those everyday interactions help establish who the brand is, what it stands for, and why someone should trust it.

Regardless of budget or team capacity, I’d start with the basics. Clear brand guidelines help ensure our colours, fonts, messaging, tone, and proposition are consistent. Whether we’re creating an event asset, posting on social media, or running a lead generation campaign, it should all reinforce the same brand. That way, even activity designed to drive an immediate response contributes to recognition over time.

Then, as I’ve mentioned, use data. For demand generation, that might mean qualified leads, opportunities, pipeline, revenue, and monthly recurring revenue. For brand building, I’d look at customer research, focus groups, branded searches, website traffic, sentiment, and reviews.

The important thing is to measure each activity against what it’s designed to achieve. Some results are immediate, while others need to be assessed over time. The core principles remain the same: be consistent, work together, keep researching, and keep refining your approach, backed by theory and data. For me, the balance is about meeting today’s business goals while building a brand that supports future growth. With AI making it easier to create more content, building a recognisable brand is more important than ever. Standing out means being clear about who you are, consistent in how you show up, and giving customers a reason to remember and trust you.

Where are you seeing AI deliver the most meaningful impact across marketing strategy today?

I’m a big advocate and fan of AI. Where I’m seeing the most meaningful impact is in helping marketers get from information to ideas and execution faster, while freeing up time for the thinking and relationships behind the work. I use it in my personal life too, whether I’m researching a brand, comparing products or gathering information before buying something. That experience also makes me think about how our customers are researching us and what information they need to make a decision.

Professionally, I use AI to explore ideas, support research, refine content, draft emails and social captions, and organise briefs. From a brand perspective, tools that have our brand guidelines built into them can also help support consistency, although the output still needs humans to review the end result. I’ll use it to mock up a design layout so I can communicate an idea to our design team, or create a starting point for a copywriter to refine. It helps me get an idea out of my head and into something we can discuss and build on. Plus, I love a good Asana board automation!

Through the industry events and conversations, I’ve been part of, one theme keeps coming up for me: the opportunity to speed up repetitive tasks while keeping people at the forefront and involved in the decisions that matter. AI can give me options, but I still need to judge whether they’re accurate, right for our audience, and true to our brand.

I don’t want to lose the experience I’ve built through relationships, asking questions, staying curious, and trying things. My understanding of our customers and business still comes from talking to people, listening, and applying what I have learnt along the way. AI helps me work with that knowledge more efficiently.

For me, the strategic value is in what we do with the time we get back. If I can spend less time on a first draft or organising information, I can spend more time with customers, collaborating with colleagues and thinking through the next opportunity. That’s how I see AI helping me become a stronger and faster marketer.

About Christine Formosa:

Christine Formosa is a passionate, inquisitive, and customer-centric marketer with eight years of experience in B2B software. A Monash University graduate with a double degree and Product Marketing Certification, she currently works as a Marketing Manager at Thryv, leading initiatives across events, partnerships, social media, brand strategy, employee advocacy, and campaign reporting and optimisation across Australia and New Zealand.

Her broader marketing experience spans demand generation, campaign execution, project management, lead generation, paid media, product marketing, product, budgeting, and performance reporting. Christine is passionate about the role marketing plays in driving meaningful business outcomes and customer value, with a strong interest in connecting brand, customer insights, and data to measurable growth.

Aspiring to become a CMO, Christine is focused on continuing to develop as a strategic marketing leader who can drive sustainable growth, strengthen customer relationships and demonstrate the measurable impact of marketing.

The post Beyond Campaigns: Christine Formosa on Building Brands That Drive Meaningful Growth appeared first on iTechSeries.

Kristen Rice, Senior Marketing AI Initiatives Manager at Okta, explores how data, AI, experimentation, and cross-functional alignment can transform modern growth marketing. From building connected GTM strategies and demand generation engines to turning complex data into actionable insights, Kristen shares practical perspectives on creating scalable systems, accelerating learning, and balancing short-term performance with sustainable, long-term growth.

Welcome to the interview series, Kristen. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

Thanks for having me! I’m really excited to be here.

My path has been anything but a straight line, and I’ve come to see that as one of my biggest strengths. I’ve spent the last 13+ years across finance, analytics, and digital marketing. Today, I sit at the intersection of AI, marketing operations, creativity, and growth.

I actually started my career in insurance. It wasn’t until about five years in that I made the jump into tech, at a Chicago startup called Sprout Social. That’s really where I found my footing and grew into a growth marketer. Over the last 8+ years, I’ve worked across a lot of disciplines within marketing, including growth, data analytics, demand generation, and experimentation. Most recently, I’ve been focused on what happens when you put AI into the growth engine itself.

When I look back, the common thread is curiosity. I started very close to the data. I was always the person who wanted to know why a number moved, not just that it did. That question kept pulling me into new places. It took me into experimentation, then creativity, then working side by side with engineering, and eventually into building with AI.

I’ve pivoted a few times, but I’ve tried to be intentional about it. Each move built on the skills I already had instead of starting over. Because of that, I can usually see a problem from a few different angles at once: the analyst, the marketer, the operator, and the builder. That mix shapes how I think about growth today. I don’t really see marketing as a set of separate channels. I see it as a system where data, creativity, technology, and people all have to work together.

How do you approach building a GTM strategy that connects marketing, sales, and customer success around shared growth goals?

I start by getting everyone aligned on where we want to create the most impact. That comes from my experimentation mindset. I want us all pointed at a clear measure of success so we know whether we’re actually moving the needle.

Marketing, sales, and customer success often optimize for different numbers and different parts of the funnel. Each of those makes sense on its own, but together they can pull in different directions. A prospect or customer doesn’t experience you that way. To them, it’s one journey. So one of the first things I like to build is a shared metric tree. It ties each team’s work to the outcomes the business cares about, whether that’s leads, pipeline, retention, or something else.

From there, it comes down to a few shared foundations. The first is shared definitions: what counts as a qualified lead, an activated customer, or an at-risk account. If teams can’t agree on those, they end up arguing about the data instead of acting on it. The second is shared signals, so product usage, intent, and engagement data flow to everyone. A churn-risk signal is just as useful to marketing for a win-back program as it is to CS. The third is shared rituals, like a regular cadence where the teams look at the funnel together and decide what to do next.

I also try to be realistic. You rarely get full alignment on day one, and I’m upfront about that. We work with what we have. I like to group the work into buckets, drive impact in increments, and build feedback loops so each win sets up the next one. Over time, those small wins connect the dots across teams. Real alignment is something you make progress on, not something you announce once.

My leadership style reflects that. It’s less “here’s the plan” and more “how does this align with what you’re already doing, and what’s the next conversation we can have to move one of these shared goals forward?” I’ve mostly led cross-functional, dotted-line teams, and alignment lasts much longer when people can see their own goals in the shared strategy.

What are the key elements of an effective growth marketing strategy, and how do you balance short-term performance with sustainable, long-term growth?

This is one of my favorite questions, because it speaks to both the analyst and the creative in me. Not everything can go up at once. The goal is a growth strategy that keeps compounding learning over time. That doesn’t mean you never go after short-term gains. It means you’re intentional about them.

For me, it starts with a clear model of the full funnel, from acquisition through activation, conversion, retention, and expansion. That’s how you find the real leverage. A lot of teams don’t look across the whole funnel, sometimes because of data or attribution challenges. But the more clearly a team can map its funnel and separate where it has a direct impact from where its impact is indirect, the better its decisions will be. Maybe that’s just the analyst in me making a plug for investing in a strong data foundation. It pays off every time.

Next is a disciplined experimentation program. Test where you can and where you can’t launch and learn quickly. I like simple prioritization frameworks like ICE (impact, confidence, ease) so the team works on the highest-value bets, not the loudest requests. I’ve also started building in “kill switches.” These are clear signals that tell you when a tactic has run its course and is starting to add friction instead of value.

Underneath all of that, you need reliable data and fast feedback loops, because you can only learn as fast as you can trust your results. You also need to invest in assets that compound, like your website, content, lifecycle programs, and owned audiences. Those keep paying off long after a campaign ends.

When it comes to balancing short- and long-term growth, I think of it as a portfolio. Part of the roadmap goes to quick wins that build momentum and trust, like conversion fixes, offer tests, and channel tuning. Another part goes to longer-term work, like retention, lifecycle, and the infrastructure that makes the whole engine faster.

The trap is optimizing only for this quarter’s number. You can push acquisition hard and still lose ground if those customers churn. That’s why I look at metrics across the whole funnel, not just the top of it. Some of the best growth comes from the customers you already have.

“I don’t really see marketing as a set of separate channels. I see it as a system where data, creativity, technology, and people all have to work together.”

How do you build a demand generation engine that drives meaningful engagement and generates a qualified pipeline?

I build demand generation backwards from the pipeline. Before choosing channels or campaigns, I want to understand who the best-fit accounts are, what signals show they’re in market, and what actually moves them from interest to a real sales conversation.

The first principle is to target with intent, not just volume. Account-based approaches and intent data, from tools like 6sense, let you focus your spend and your sales team’s attention on accounts that are actually showing buying signals. That’s a very different motion from casting the widest possible net.

The second is making every touchpoint earn its place. Paid, content, web, and email should feel like one connected journey, not a set of separate campaigns. The website matters a lot here, because it’s often where intent turns into action. That’s why I see CRO as a demand gen lever, too. Every touchpoint is connected, so each one should make sense and add value. That’s where experimentation comes in. It’s how you find out what’s actually working, instead of assuming.

Third, measure quality, not just quantity. I’d much rather have fewer leads that convert to pipeline than a big volume that sales ignores. Tracking how leads move through each stage and what they contribute to the pipeline keeps everyone honest and keeps marketing and sales on the same side of the table.

And finally, operationalize the engine. Repeatable campaign systems, clean handoffs, and automation free the team to spend its time on strategy and creativity instead of manual execution. This is where AI has made a real difference for me. Building programs in Marketo or setting up campaigns in Salesforce used to be a lot of manual work, and much of it can now be automated. The point isn’t just to move faster. It’s to give the team more time to be intentional about building the right campaigns.

How do you turn complex marketing data into clear, actionable insights that inform better decisions?

I’m an analyst at heart, so I can easily spend an entire day digging into data. Part of my discipline, however, is knowing when to step back from the details. My biggest advice is to start with the decision, not the data. Before building any analysis, I ask, “What decision is this meant to inform, and what would we do differently depending on the answer?” That question helps eliminate dashboards and reports that may look useful but don’t drive action.

From there, a few habits make a big difference. I always lead with the “so what.” The headline should communicate the insight and recommendation, with the supporting data coming afterwards. Busy stakeholders should be able to understand what matters and what action to take from the first sentence. I also connect metrics to the outcomes people care about. A lift in conversion rate becomes much more meaningful when you can demonstrate its impact on the pipeline or revenue.

I believe in being transparent about confidence. I try to distinguish between what the data clearly supports, what is directional, and what still needs to be tested. That transparency builds trust in the numbers, and trust is what gets insights acted on.

Another priority is shortening the time to insight. An insight delivered three weeks too late can lose much of its value. Automating how insights reach teams can make a major difference. A former teammate built a Slack bot that surfaced performance data and generated insights automatically. I loved the concept because it centralized the story and helped everyone work from the same picture before decisions were made.

My background in analytics and experimentation has shaped this approach. The goal has never been to create more data; it has always been to enable faster, better decisions.

That’s also where AI comes in. I see three big opportunities in marketing. First, AI can remove operational drag by automating repetitive work such as campaign setup, asset formatting, QA, and reporting. Second, it can accelerate experimentation by helping teams generate ideas, prioritize tests, analyze results, and identify what matters. More experiments create more learning, and that learning compounds. Third, AI can make insights more accessible by turning complex data into plain-language answers.

The key is designing Human + AI workflows rather than trying to replace people. AI brings speed and scale, while humans provide judgment, context, and creativity. Start with one workflow, measure the outcome, build trust, and scale from there. You don’t need to boil the ocean to make AI meaningfully improve marketing performance.

What advice would you give marketing leaders looking to build a scalable, data-driven growth engine?

I love this question, because I think a lot of leaders feel pressure to have everything figured out at once, especially right now with AI moving so fast. The truth is, the strongest growth engines I’ve seen weren’t built in one big launch. They were built layer by layer, with a lot of learning along the way. With that in mind, here’s what I’d share.

First, get your foundations right. Shared definitions, clean data, and a clear funnel model aren’t glamorous, but everything else depends on them. If the foundation is shaky, every decision on top of it is shaky too. Second, build a culture of experimentation, not just a testing calendar. Celebrate learning, including the losses. A test that disproves a strong assumption is often more valuable than a small win, because it changes how you think. Third, prioritize ruthlessly. Use a simple framework so the team stays focused on the highest-leverage work, not whatever request is loudest that week. Fourth, treat speed as a strategy. The teams that win usually aren’t the ones with the most ideas. They’re the ones that learn the fastest. Invest in whatever shortens the cycle from idea to insight to action.

Fifth, start with AI now, but start with a real problem. Pick one painful, repetitive workflow, understand your baseline, improve it, and show the impact. Small, proven wins build momentum much faster than big, vague AI initiatives. And finally, lead through alignment. Growth is a team sport across marketing, sales, product, engineering, and beyond. The more people see their own goals in the strategy, the faster the whole engine moves. In my experience, that’s what really makes it scale.

About Kristen Rice

Kristen Rice is a growth and AI marketing leader focused on helping teams build systems that multiply output through strategy, experimentation, and intentional AI workflows. With 13+ years spanning financial analysis, data, growth product management, CRO, and marketing operations, she brings a cross-functional perspective to modern growth. At Okta, Kristen is building the AI function from the ground up, designing agentic systems, workflows, and internal tooling that enhance marketing performance.

The post Kristen Rice on Data, AI, Experimentation, and Building Sustainable Growth Engines appeared first on iTechSeries.

Keiara Johnson, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Sage, growth marketing and AI consultant, and founder of Growth Guru Marketing, explores how customer insight, data, and AI can transform marketing into measurable growth. She shares perspectives on revenue-focused strategies, customer engagement, performance measurement, and using AI to help marketers make smarter decisions and build sustainable business impact.

Welcome to the interview series, Keiara. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

Thank you for having me! I’m Keiara Johnson, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Sage. My career has spanned B2C, B2B demand generation, and customer marketing, giving me a broad perspective on how businesses earn attention, build relationships, and create lasting growth.

In my current role, I focus on customer marketing, using customer insight and performance data to guide engagement and support adoption, retention, and expansion. I’m particularly interested in how AI can strengthen marketing decisions and improve how teams work.

What has stayed consistent throughout my journey is my curiosity about people: what they’re trying to achieve, what’s getting in their way, and how marketing can help them move forward. That understanding is the foundation of how I approach growth.

With experience across B2C, B2B demand generation, and customer marketing, what shaped your transition into revenue-focused marketing?

Each stage of my career added another layer to how I understood growth. B2C taught me the importance of emotion, relevance, and earning attention. B2B demand generation taught me to connect that attention to buying intent and opportunity creation. Customer marketing expanded my perspective to what happens after the sale: whether customers adopt the solution, realize value, stay, and grow.

That progression made me more interested in the entire customer relationship. A campaign can perform well on paper while the business still struggles to convert demand or retain customers. I wanted to understand that disconnect and help solve it.

Revenue-focused marketing starts with asking better questions: Which customers have a meaningful need? What action would help them? How will we know that action created value? Those questions have shaped how I approach strategy, investment, and collaboration with sales.

As performance marketing evolves beyond campaign execution, what capabilities help teams drive strategic growth?

The strongest teams combine commercial understanding, customer insight, and the ability to turn data into decisions.

Commercial understanding means knowing how the business earns revenue, where growth opportunities exist, and what prevents customers from moving forward. Customer insight means understanding the people behind the segments—their priorities, pressures, and reasons for making a decision. Analytical capability means explaining what the results suggest we should do next.

Teams also need strong stakeholder management. Growth depends on marketing, sales, customer success, product, and operations working toward shared outcomes. That requires clear ownership and agreement on what happens after a customer responds.

Finally, teams need disciplined experimentation. They should be able to form a clear hypothesis, test it, and decide whether to scale, adjust, or stop. Strategic growth comes from improving those decisions consistently.

Can you share a challenging campaign you led and the key decisions that contributed to its success?

One example involved engaging existing B2B customers around a solution that required a considered buying decision. The challenge was that interest in the topic did not automatically translate into readiness for a sales conversation. Customers had multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and a need to understand the business value.

A key decision was to build the message around customer challenges and desired outcomes. We coordinated educational content and outreach to give customers several opportunities to understand the relevance of the solution.

The campaign reinforced the importance of looking beyond the initial response. Engagement is an encouraging signal, but the next step must help customers evaluate the opportunity and move forward at a pace appropriate to their needs.

My biggest takeaway was that campaign success depends on continuity between the message, the experience, and the follow-up. Each interaction should help the customer make a more informed decision.

“Every interaction should build on what we know about the customer and help them move toward an outcome they care about.”

What approaches have you found most effective for engaging different customer segments and driving retention, adoption, and growth?

I start with what the customer needs to accomplish and where they are in their relationship with the business. Company size and industry provide useful context, but they don’t tell the whole story. Product adoption, engagement, business priorities, and readiness for change matter too.

For adoption, customers need practical education and a clear path to using the capabilities they already have. For retention, they need continued evidence of value and timely support when something is getting in the way. For expansion, they need a credible connection between an additional solution and a business problem worth solving.

The experience should also match the complexity of the decision. Some customers benefit from scalable digital education; others need a more personalized conversation involving sales or subject-matter experts.

My approach is to make the next step feel useful and achievable. Relevance earns engagement, and consistently delivering value builds the relationship that supports growth.

Which metrics and frameworks help connect marketing investment to measurable business impact?

I look at measurement as a connected journey: engagement, qualified demand, opportunity creation, revenue, and customer value over time.

Engagement metrics help diagnose whether the message and experience are working. Opportunity and revenue metrics help establish commercial contribution. Adoption, renewal, retention, and expansion show whether growth is sustainable.

The connections between those stages matter. I want to understand conversion rates, follow-up speed, opportunity quality, win rates, and where momentum is lost. A high lead volume is less valuable if the leads never progress.

A useful framework is to define the business objective first, identify the customer behavior that would support it, and then select the measures that show progress. That keeps reporting focused on decisions and outcomes.

I also distinguish between marketing-sourced and marketing-influenced revenue. Clear definitions and agreed measurement windows help teams assess contribution honestly and make better investment decisions.

As AI reshapes marketing, what capabilities will matter most for marketers going forward?

Judgment will become even more valuable. As AI makes producing content and completing tasks easier, marketers need to be clear about which problems deserve attention, what a good outcome looks like, and how to evaluate the work.

That requires strong problem framing, data literacy, customer understanding, and the ability to design workflows. Marketers should understand where AI can support a process, where human review belongs, and who is accountable for the result.

In helping marketers build their first AI agents, I’ve seen how valuable it is to start with a specific business need. The quality of the instructions matters, but so do the information the agent receives, the boundaries it operates within, and the way its outputs are tested.

The marketers who stand out will connect technology with sound business decisions. AI can increase our capacity, but we still need the expertise to decide what deserves to be built and whether it actually helps the customer.

About Keiara Johnson

Keiara Johnson is a growth marketing and AI leader focused on building growth systems that connect customer intelligence, commercial strategy, technology, and people. She leads customer growth strategy across Sage Intacct’s $300M revenue portfolio, with expertise spanning lifecycle strategy, retention, expansion, measurement, sales alignment, and AI-enabled commercial intelligence. Keiara also speaks and teaches on AI, growth marketing, customer behavior, career development, and human judgment in intelligent systems.

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Letizia Manzieri, Head of Field Marketing, Southern Europe, at Check Point Software, shares her journey from channel marketing to leading field marketing across Southern Europe. She explores building flexible regional strategies, fostering cross-functional collaboration, measuring commercial impact beyond leads, and embracing AI to elevate marketing effectiveness. She also reflects on curiosity, continuous learning, and sustainable growth as essential drivers of marketing success.

Welcome to the interview series, Letizia. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

My journey has been one of continuous, sustainable growth. It started in channel marketing, where I learned firsthand how central partners are to the go-to-market motion of any IT company; they are not a distribution layer but a true extension of the business. From there, I moved into leading field marketing for Italy and more recently into leading the Southern Europe region as a whole. Each step has been a natural widening of scope and responsibility, built on the same foundation: consistency. Rather than reinventing myself with every move, I’ve tried to carry forward what worked, adapt it to a bigger stage, and keep building on it.

Consistency has been my compass throughout.

How do you build a regional field marketing strategy that balances Southern Europe’s diverse market needs with broader business objectives?

The keyword is flexibility. Southern Europe is truly a mosaic of distinct markets, requiring a customized approach rather than a universal playbook. What works in Italy doesn’t necessarily work in Iberia or Israel. So I’ve learned to think “global but stay local.”

I lean heavily on strong local teams who truly understand their markets and know how to translate our regional strategy into something that actually resonates there. My job is to give them direction and set the guardrails, the non-negotiables we can’t compromise on—but without squeezing out the flexibility they need to make it work on the ground.

In driving regional initiatives, which approaches help marketing, sales, communications, and partner teams work toward shared goals?

I call it my “open garden” approach. The idea is simple: instead of building walls between functions, you create an environment where ideas can circulate freely while still keeping a clear structure underneath.

In practice, this means strong collaboration, continuous alignment with stakeholders, and genuine cross-pollination of ideas across marketing, sales, communications, and partner teams. Each of these functions sees the business through a different lens: sales are closest to the customer’s urgency, partners bring market reach and local credibility, communications shapes how the story lands externally, and marketing connects all of it into a coherent narrative and pipeline engine.

The best initiatives are never born in a silo; they emerge precisely at the intersection of these perspectives, when people are willing to challenge and enrich each other’s thinking rather than simply execute in parallel.

What keeps an “open garden” from turning into chaos is discipline around the destination. The shared goals have to stay fixed and non-negotiable; everyone needs to be rowing toward the same outcome, whether that’s pipeline generation, a specific launch, or a regional campaign. At the same time, respect for each team’s roles and responsibilities (R&R) is essential and never becomes lost along the way: openness to contribution doesn’t mean blurring accountability. Everyone must know their responsibilities and metrics while being open to input from other functions. It’s that balance—fixed goals and clear ownership, paired with fluid collaboration and cross-functional contamination of ideas—that allows regional initiatives to move fast without losing coherence and to feel truly “owned” by every team involved rather than imposed top-down.

“I lean heavily on strong local teams who truly understand their markets and know how to translate our regional strategy into something that actually resonates there.”

Could you tell us about your most challenging yet memorable experience as a marketer?

There have been several, but what stands out most is the pressure and expectations that come with the role, which ultimately also reflect trust. It’s trust I never want to let down. What has always carried me through is collaboration: a real team spirit, the sense that we’re all playing the same match, no matter our role in the hierarchy. When a team truly moves as one, even the toughest moments become not just manageable but genuinely memorable in the best way. Those experiences have taught me that resilience grows when people support each other, stay focused on a shared purpose, and keep moving forward together.

Beyond lead generation, which metrics do you use to evaluate the commercial impact of field marketing programs?

The metrics that matter most to me go well beyond top-of-funnel leads: marketing-sourced pipeline, C-level engagement, win rate, and marketing’s overall contribution to total pipeline. Together, these give a much clearer picture of commercial impact; they show not just that marketing is generating activity, but that it’s engaging the right audience and genuinely moving revenue forward. I also look at sales alignment and progression after key engagements to understand whether field programs are creating meaningful opportunities and supporting sustainable revenue growth.

How do you see AI reshaping field marketing, campaign execution, and customer engagement in the coming years?

There’s no doubt AI is already making a difference; it’s helping us move faster on the recurring, time-consuming tasks that used to eat up our days. For me, it’s really about time management. But the real challenge, the one I keep thinking about, is what we do with that extra time. I believe the teams that will truly win are the ones that reinvest it into high-value work, especially building new skills instead of just using it to do the same old things faster. That means becoming more strategic, creative, and customer-focused, using AI not simply as a productivity tool, but as a catalyst for better ideas, experiences, and decisions.

What advice would you share with field marketers looking to make a greater impact on pipeline and revenue?

Stay curious, always. Make it a habit to immerse yourself in innovation hubs, keep your mind open to new ideas, and never stop learning. For me, impact has always come from contamination, letting yourself be challenged by different perspectives and trends, and being willing to let them reshape how you work.

In conclusion, if there’s one word that ties everything together, it’s “growth.” It’s there in the sustainable path my own career has taken, in the flexibility I bring to every Southern Europe market, in the collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas that make our teams stronger together, in the toughest experiences that shaped who I am as a marketer, in the pipeline and C-level engagement I use to measure real impact, in the new skills I get to build when AI frees up my time, and in staying curious enough to keep learning from everyone around me. If I had to leave you with one thought, it would be this: widen the scope, but never lose the core. That’s the balance I try to live by every single day.

About Letizia Manzieri:

With over 15 years of marketing experience across national and multinational organizations, Letizia Manzieri specializes in brand awareness, event management, social media communications, and pipeline generation. At Check Point Software Technologies, she leads the Southern Europe regional marketing team, developing country-specific strategies aligned with business goals. Her expertise spans cross-functional collaboration, customer acquisition, and maximizing local impact through global programs, with a strong focus on measurable outcomes and sustainable marketing growth.

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Jeremy Parchesky, Sr. Manager, Account-Based Marketing at Samsara, shares insights on building scalable GTM engines through revenue-driven ABM, intent data, and sales-marketing alignment. Drawing from his experience across diverse industries, he explores practical strategies for identifying buying signals, personalizing engagement, leveraging AI, and turning account intelligence into pipeline and measurable revenue growth.

Welcome to the interview series, Jeremy. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

My marketing background is quite diverse. The journey started as an intern with Bose on their Voice of the Customer team. While still in college, I also interned with the Athletic Department at Ohio State, where I learned how closely sales and marketing must work together to drive success. After spending some time in sales across a few different organizations, I realized it wasn’t my true calling. I transitioned into marketing, working across various industries—from public sector organizations and e-commerce companies to Fortune 500 enterprises. I was introduced to Account-Based Marketing (ABM) during my time at Everbridge, and it felt like I had finally found the perfect fit for my background. It allowed me to show organizations exactly how a unified sales and marketing team can drive real pipeline opportunities.

You describe ABM as more than campaign marketing. What makes ABM revenue-driven rather than traditional demand generation?

I believe Account-Based Marketing should be leveraged to drive revenue through the entire funnel, not just at the top. We can use digital advertising to generate awareness and demand, which allows us to point our sales teams toward the right targets who are actively in-market. Further down the funnel, tying marketing efforts directly to revenue values gives us the ability to properly allocate resources and help push open opportunities to close. This creates a more connected approach where marketing can demonstrate its impact at every stage, while sales teams receive better signals and support to prioritize the accounts most likely to convert.

Which elements are essential to building scalable ABM playbooks while maintaining personalization?

The absolute most critical element is a rigid tiering system. Marketers need to deeply understand their Total Addressable Market (TAM) and confidently identify which accounts warrant marketing resources. Secondly, an intent-driven ABM platform—like 6sense or Terminus—is essential. Driving awareness and acting quickly on buyer signals is imperative to building a pipeline and outpacing the competition. With most teams operating lean these days, these two elements—tiering and a strong platform—help establish exactly how much work is required to achieve goals while setting realistic expectations. The combination helps teams focus effort where it matters most, improve campaign efficiency, and deliver relevant experiences without sacrificing scale or adding unnecessary operational complexity.

“Account-Based Marketing should be leveraged to drive revenue through the entire funnel, not just at the top.”

What strategies and ABM plays have been most effective in driving pipeline and revenue growth?

At SevenRooms, we needed a proven, repeatable way to drive results for our sales teams and uncover in-market accounts. Internally, we developed a clear definition of a Marketing Qualified Account (MQA). By using our ABM platform’s intent data, we could highlight specific accounts for our SDR team to prioritize in their outreach. Translating ABM data into actionable steps is necessary to drive results for a GTM team.

Another highly effective strategy is meeting prospective contacts right at their doorstep. Buyers are incredibly busy and rarely have time to casually speak with a sales rep. To cut through the noise, we turn to targeted gifting and direct mail campaigns to secure meetings and start conversations. All of these targeting decisions are rooted in our tiering system and intent data to ensure a high return on effort.

How can AI help marketers identify new buying signals and engagement opportunities within target accounts?

I use AI as a core part of my daily workflow. It does an incredible job of synthesizing massive amounts of data, helping marketers pick up on trending intent signals to ensure we are staying ahead of market shifts. I also use AI to streamline reporting, document creation, and dashboard generation for the sales team. Ultimately, AI handles the heavy lifting on data synthesis so I can focus on driving more campaigns while empowering the sales team to do what they do best. It also helps uncover patterns across account activity that might otherwise be overlooked, giving marketers more opportunities to engage prospects with timely, relevant messaging and stronger context.

Where have you seen marketing evolve most through stronger alignment across revenue teams?

When marketing develops a true understanding of how the sales team achieves its goals, it completely changes how we approach our audience. It allows us to deeply understand our customers and identify exactly which pain points our solutions solve. I have been in organizations where marketing and sales worked in silos—or even in spite of one another—without shared goals. Account-Based Marketing naturally bridges that gap, aligns the revenue teams, and ultimately drives tangible results. A shared understanding of customers also helps teams prioritize the right accounts, create more relevant engagement, and build stronger connections between marketing activity and revenue outcomes.

About Jeremy Parchesky

Jeremy Parchesky is a strategic Account-Based Marketing (ABM) leader specializing in B2B SaaS, enterprise pipeline generation, and revenue-focused GTM strategies. With experience spanning sales, marketing, and customer engagement, he builds personalized 1:1, 1, and 1 programs that align Marketing, Sales, RevOps, and Customer Success. Jeremy leverages data, AI, and modern marketing technology to accelerate pipeline, increase deal velocity, strengthen customer relationships, and create scalable ABM engines that deliver measurable business impact.

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Elena Turkmen, Head of Revenue Strategy at Acronis, explores building scalable GTM engines by aligning Marketing, Sales, Finance, and RevOps around shared commercial goals. She discusses smarter investment decisions, customer value, GTM experimentation, profitability, and measurable outcomes, while explaining why Marketing must look beyond campaigns to shape broader commercial strategy and customer experience.

Welcome to the interview series, Elena. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

I’m actually not a traditional marketer, and I don’t want to pretend to be one.

I spent most of my career on the commercial side, primarily in Sales, before moving much closer to Marketing, investment governance, and revenue strategy.

There is one thing that has consistently bothered me throughout my career: commercial waste. When a company is spending money on something because “we have always done it this way,” when a customer or partner is no longer economically attractive but nobody wants to challenge it, or when we could get a much better result from the same resources but the organization is simply not set up to do it.

That is probably the common thread in everything I have done. I like finding where revenue, margin, or commercial investment is leaking, understanding why it is happening, fixing it, and then building a system so that the same problem doesn’t keep coming back.

I have done that from different sides of the business: Sales, new products and markets, Marketing, transformation, and investment allocation. So I probably look at Marketing a little differently. I don’t see it as a standalone function. I see it as one part of the commercial system, and I’m always interested in the same question: are we getting enough value from the resources we are putting into it?

You’ve worked across revenue strategy and commercial operations. What does it take to build a scalable commercial engine?

If I knew the universal formula for building a huge, scalable commercial engine, I would probably have built my own company by now and be selling you the product. I don’t think there is one formula that works for every company. But I can tell you what I’ve seen across different businesses and what I would look at if I were building my own company tomorrow.

The first thing I’ve learned is that more doesn’t automatically mean scale. More activities, more customers, more markets, more campaigns, more emails, and even hiring more salespeople—very often doesn’t produce the growth you expect. So I would look at three things.

First, I would try to understand my customer extremely well. What do they actually want? What value are they getting from my product? What alternatives do they have, and why would they choose me?

Second, I would look at my ability to deliver that value. And this is not only a Sales or Marketing question, but Product matters enormously. Can the product serve the next customer or market? Largely as it is, or does every expansion require new features, customization, localization, or implementation capacity? Let’s say I want to enter Japan. It may be a very attractive market, but if I need a local team, significant localization, different content, product changes, and a different sales motion, I need to understand what that expansion actually requires from the organization.

When you work across dozens of markets, you learn very quickly that “this worked in Germany; let’s do it everywhere” is not a scaling strategy. A market opportunity and your ability to serve that opportunity are two different things.

And third, I would look at the economics. What does it cost me to acquire and serve that customer? Where do I actually make money? What happens to profitability and unit economics as I grow?

For me, those three things have to work together: the customer has to want it, you have to be able to deliver it, and the economics have to make sense.

That still doesn’t give you a magic formula for scale. But it tells you whether doing more of something is actually a good idea.

What are the biggest challenges in turning a GTM strategy into effective execution?

For me, one of the most important things in GTM execution is flexibility.

You may have a clear idea of the market you want to enter, the customer you want to target, and the product you want to sell. But at that point, it is still a hypothesis. So I would build a series of experiments around it. Maybe we run three experiments: two work and one doesn’t. Then we need to move quickly, invest more in what is working, change what isn’t, or stop it altogether. The strategy gives you direction, but execution has to give you evidence.

The second thing I see missing quite often is one person who is accountable for the economics of that GTM motion end-to-end. Because what normally happens? Marketing owns demand. Sales owns conversion and revenue. Product owns what we build. Customer Success owns adoption and retention. Finance looks at the economics. RevOps connects much of the data and process. Everyone can be doing their job well. But who can tell me whether the GTM motion worked end-to-end?

We decided to invest in this market, partner, or customer. What happened to that commercial dollar? What converted? Did the customer adopt the product? Did they get the value we promised? Did they renew or expand? What was the profitability? And based on that, what did we decide to scale, change, or stop?

Across different organizations, I’ve often seen strong connections between sales and finance but much less mature connections between marketing and finance. Marketing, Sales, and Finance need to be looking at the same commercial story together. So for me, effective execution is not simply delivering the GTM plan. It is having enough flexibility, ownership, and visibility to follow a commercial investment through to the economic result and then act on what you learn.

“Marketing is no longer just a function that helps the company grow. It can have a real voice in how the commercial model and, ultimately, the company strategy evolves.”

How can Marketing, Sales, Finance, and RevOps work together toward shared revenue goals?

I don’t think all functions need to have the same KPIs. But their KPIs need to be connected to the same company goals. I have seen different attempts to create this connection. Marketing may be measured on lead quality or accepted leads rather than simply lead volume. Sometimes part of the marketing bonus depends on whether Sales achieves its target. But I have rarely seen a system where marketing, sales, finance, and RevOps are all genuinely connected through their KPIs.

I would start with one or two priorities that matter most to the company at that point in time and work backwards. And in a recurring-revenue business, I would actually extend this beyond the four functions in your question. Product and Customer Success have to be part of the same system, because winning the customer is only the beginning.

Take NRR as an example. Marketing may influence customer engagement and expansion demand; Sales, the commercial expansion; Customer Success, adoption and retention; Product, the value customers continue to receive; RevOps, the data and process; and finance, the economics. They do not need the same KPIs, but their KPIs should explain how each function contributes to the same company outcome.

And someone has to make sure we can actually see that chain in the data. Otherwise, connected KPIs exist only on PowerPoint. The same logic should determine how resources are prioritized. A $5,000 renewal and a $200 renewal should not automatically receive the same attention. There needs to be some understanding of customer or partner value, risk, and potential.

I would also bring finance much closer into this process. Staying within budget is important, but it doesn’t tell us whether the budget was used well. I would want to know what the investment produced, what we stopped when it wasn’t working, and where we reallocated the money. So for me, alignment is not about giving everyone the same KPI. It is about making sure that functional KPIs ultimately support the same one or two company priorities.

How do you balance growth, profitability, and operational efficiency when setting commercial priorities?

I don’t think there is one universal balance between growth, profitability, and efficiency. It depends on the company’s strategy, investment thesis, and stage of development.

A company entering a new market, for example, may deliberately prioritize growth and accept lower profitability for a period of time. That can make sense, as long as the company understands what it is investing in, what it expects to achieve, and over what timeframe. A company at a different stage may prioritize profitability or efficiency much more strongly. Then the question becomes, “Are we using every commercial dollar in the best possible way?”

One question I find useful is, what is my best investment option, what is my second-best option, and why am I choosing the first one? Even having one alternative forces you to think differently about where you put your resources.

This is also why I think Commercial, Marketing, and Finance need to work very closely together. Finance should be able to challenge commercial assumptions, but to do that well, finance also needs to understand how Sales and Marketing actually work. And commercial teams need to go one level deeper than committing to a revenue number. The question is not only, “How much revenue will this investment generate?” but also, “What kind of revenue will it generate?” What will the profitability or unit economics look like?

You can achieve the revenue target and still damage the economics of the business. So the priority should reflect not only the amount of growth you want, but the economics you are prepared to accept to get it.

How can sales teams move from selling solutions to demonstrating measurable business value?

I think Sales needs to understand the economics on both sides of the deal. Sales has already evolved significantly from simply presenting a product. Today, a good salesperson is expected to understand the customer, identify the problem, and show how the product can solve it. I think the next step is to translate that problem into measurable business value.

If a customer has an inefficient process, it is not enough to say that our product can automate it. What does that inefficiency actually cost them? Does it consume capacity, delay revenue, reduce margin, or create additional risk? And if we solve it, what should change in measurable terms? Sales should not build a business case around value the product cannot realistically deliver, and Product should be learning from Sales and Customer Success whether the value proposition is actually materializing after the sale.

But I would also look at the economics from the seller’s side. Not all revenue has the same value. A deal with healthy pricing and scalable delivery is very different from the same amount of revenue achieved through heavy discounting, extensive customization, and high cost-to-serve.

I think this should also be reflected in how we measure Sales. Revenue attainment is important, but depending on the business model, sales performance can also include measures of revenue quality where Sales can materially influence them, for example, discount discipline, price realization, retention, or expansion economics.

This also affects pricing and GTM decisions. When entering a new market or launching a new product, the company should have some understanding of the economic range within which it is prepared to operate. So I would connect the two sides: what measurable value are we creating for the customer, and are we creating that value in a way that also makes economic sense for our own company?

What advice would you give revenue marketers looking to build impactful marketing strategies and drive stronger business results?

I would encourage marketers to think much more broadly about their role in the company. Marketing probably has one of the best views of the customer in the organization. And I don’t think that responsibility should stop with campaigns, messaging, or even the product.

If customers love the product but hate the support experience, that is a marketing problem too. If working with us is unnecessarily difficult, if our partners create a poor customer experience, or if something in the way we sell or serve customers consistently frustrates them, Marketing should bring that back into the organization. It doesn’t mean Marketing should run Support, Sales, or Operations. But I think strong marketers should be able to look at the company through the customer’s eyes and influence much more than the marketing function itself.

The second thing is capital. Marketing leaders manage significant budgets, and I would encourage them to think about that money as an investment portfolio. The capital is limited. There are always more markets, partners, campaigns, events, and ideas than you can fund. So where do you put the next dollar? What do you stop funding? What deserves more?

I think that combination makes Marketing much more powerful: understanding the company from the customer’s perspective and understanding the marketing budget from an investor’s perspective.

At that point, Marketing is no longer just a function that helps the company grow. It can have a real voice in how the commercial model and, ultimately, the company strategy evolves.

About Elena Turkmen

Elena Turkmen is a commercial and revenue strategy leader with experience across global enterprises, PE-backed B2B software, and information services. Her expertise spans pricing and revenue capture, GTM productivity, partner economics, and commercial capital allocation. With experience at Microsoft, Argus Media, and Acronis, she has driven measurable improvements in profitability, growth, forecasting, and investment efficiency. Elena holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and brings a practical, economics-led perspective to modern commercial strategy.

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In this iTechSeries Unplugged interview, Rachel Ennis, Marketing Director at CACTUS, shares her perspective on strategic B2B marketing, building credibility, and keeping go-to-market simple and focused. She explores global-local marketing, meaningful customer signals, cross-functional alignment, and the shift from campaign execution to commercially focused leadership, offering practical insights for marketers navigating growth and change.

Welcome to the interview series, Rachel. Could you tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

I started on the agency side at Omnicom Media Group, and this was the best possible training ground to mold an all-round marketer. Multiple times a day, you’re required to justify every thought, recommendation, and decision you make to clients who are focused on the results you deliver, not the process you follow to get there. So much of what I learned in my ad-land days has stayed with me; I even ensure my team is following a template I used to plan my traditional media plans for Boots back in 2012! I started as a PPC Executive and left as a Senior Media Planner, having experienced all areas that media has to offer.

Now I’m Marketing Director at CACTUS, where I lead strategy, brand, thought leadership, events, and content for our B2B business. What’s shaped me most recently is leading a team through a growth period in our business and pushing us out of a comfort zone to get more creative and embrace new business areas. I’m currently leading a rebrand of our B2B business where building shared understanding and alignment around the vision is essential.

How does your approach to customer needs, messaging, and campaigns differ across B2B and B2C audiences?

B2C sells a feeling in a moment; B2B sells confidence and credibility, and these have to be re-earned at every single touchpoint.

People love to say B2B just means longer cycles and more stakeholders, and yes, that’s true, but I think that skips over a key difference.

In B2C, you’re selling a feeling in a moment; you get someone’s attention for a few seconds, and you either connect with them or you don’t. In B2B, you’re selling confidence over months, sometimes across five or six people who all have veto power and (in some cases) none of whom asked to be sold to in the first place. The job is more about consistency and thought leadership, rather than random campaign bursts. It’s integral in B2B that your company/product/solution/service is showing up as credible and useful each time a potential buyer encounters you in the funnel. Whether that’s a whitepaper, an organic LinkedIn post, or a brief conversation at an event.

The first half of my career was in a B2C capacity, and I can safely say that the best B2B marketers borrow from B2C’s craft storytelling, brand feel, and how the creative makes you feel, and then strategically apply that to the much more patient (longer sales cycle) trust-building game of B2B marketing.

Across international markets, what has been most effective in balancing global consistency with local relevance?

Global consistency vs. local relevance, ensuring you maintain the desired feeling across global audiences.

Most of my time in ad land was in Dublin, where global brands, usually headquartered in the UK, would often try to ‘Irish-ise’ what they’d created for the UK market. Without fail, these ads always landed flat on their face with Irish audiences, as they were so obviously not created with an Irish audience in mind, so the relevancy score was always low.

Being on the client side of marketing now, I can see why it happens; usually it’s for ease and cost purposes. But treating global consistency as a locked-down style guide and local relevance as just translating the copy is a terrible and obvious mistake to make. Tapping into local colloquialisms and trusting your local colleagues and agencies is imperative to remaining consistent as well as successfully reaching your audience.

What must stay consistent is the core story of why you matter because that’s your brand equity, and diluting it market to market is how you end up with no identity anywhere or a bunch of terribly confused potential customers.

What should flex is the proof: the case studies demonstrating your top results and the specific pain points you can solve. Working across markets from the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, I’ve found the fastest way to get this right is having someone in-market who can tell you which stat will land successfully and which one is a clear copy-and-paste from another market.

Which data points or customer signals do you find most valuable when planning and optimizing marketing campaigns?

Though I am, of course, interested in who engaged and do see value in them, I also want to know where an engaged buyer stalls. Clicks and open rates signal curiosity, but there’s little indication as to what stopped them from continuing the potential journey through the funnel.

The signals that I home in on are things like content consumption patterns, which pieces get shared internally, and which panel conversations or conference presentations can break through so well that it still gets brought up months later (this happened for us, so I’m always delighted to bring it up!). Because I run several events each year, I think about the conversations that turn into a next step, not just a polite handshake. In a business like ours, where credibility and relationships really matter, I care more about depth than volume—one senior stakeholder spending 15 minutes with a piece of content or having a 15-minute conversation with us at an event can tell me more than a thousand impressions.

“In B2B, your credibility is everything, and for me, keeping things simple and letting your offering, portfolio, demos, testimonials, and people do the talking speaks volumes.”

Could you walk us through your go-to-market approach, from identifying the opportunity to getting the product on the shelves?

I feel like this is a question of two parts: the funnel and simplicity.

I’m sure most marketers will think of the marketing funnel, but there’s something about the word “funnel” that gives me the ick, and I hate referring to it in strategies and campaigns. I understand its value, but it can kill creativity and spontaneity and lock marketers in a sad little box! I encourage using a “filter” rather than a “funnel,” identifying what won’t work given your parameters before you ever get to what will.

That filtering starts with being ruthless about which opportunity is worth chasing, because with a small team, saying yes to too many “good ideas” can do more damage to a team’s and therefore the business’s performance than saying no ever would. Everybody has an opinion on marketing, and plenty think it’s an “easy” job. Get that first step wrong, and it could spell disaster for your ROI and pipeline. Learning that “No” is an answer and a full sentence is a must. So, get filtering!

Once something has passed that filter, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the need to be exceptionally creative to stand out. Competition is fierce, and AI is making it more intense. If I were still working in ad land, I’d be locked into this way of thinking. But in B2B, your credibility is everything, and for me, keeping things simple and letting your offering, portfolio, demos, testimonials, and people do the talking speaks volumes. We’re exposed to so much that we don’t need multiple times a day, so I want our marketing to be a breath of fresh air: informative and credible. That’s why my B2B plans always include CACTUS-run events, conference booths, content, thought leadership, lead gen campaigns, and ABM. If I see too many “gimmicky” things, I wonder, “What are you trying to hide?”

Once we’ve committed, we work with Sales, Design, and Product to get the messaging right and cure pain points, not just name them. We work backwards from the end decision-maker who’ll sign off: who has to say yes, what must each believe, and what’s the sequence of proof? Before creating assets, we build the story and message, map it across channels, and create sales support materials that help move a buyer from “ok, you have my interest” to “it’s now on the decision maker’s desk, ready to be signed.”

How do you drive effective cross-functional collaboration when bringing a product or campaign to market?

Cross-functional collaboration mostly fails because marketing asks for buy-in too late, after the plan is built or when executing a campaign because someone said so.

Most cross-functional friction I’ve seen is a timing problem. Marketing builds the plan, then goes around asking sales, product, and leadership to align on it, and alignment after the fact just means persuasion, which takes twice as long and often results in redoing the whole strategy and plan. Sales and other functions need to be involved while the narrative is still being shaped. Asking for alignment means receiving critiques and having holes poked in your plan, which leads to a whole lot of wasted time and rushing things in the final hurdles to meet go-live timelines, with mistakes being made.

Practically, that means things like building shared visibility for the team so everyone, not just marketing, can see what’s moving and what’s stuck, rather than status updates living in one of thirty Teams chats. It sounds small, but visibility is most of what “alignment” actually means in practice.

What advice would you give marketers looking to move from campaign execution to strategic, commercially focused leadership?

Any leader worth following is always learning! They’re willing to adapt as they grow.

In campaign execution, your success is measured by output and stats, and it’s a hard habit to shift. I still remind myself that senior leadership doesn’t care about the number of campaigns we executed but what story we told to deliver a healthy pipeline revenue number. As I set my sights on the top of the career ladder, I noticed in interviews that I was asked to give examples of how I influenced a decision. As you progress, much of what you do will be influencing stakeholders to buy into your thinking and gain their trust.

The shift I’d tell any marketer to make is to start tracking the decisions you’ve shaped, not the deliverables you’ve produced. That’s the thinking commercial leadership appreciates.

Practically: ask for a seat in rooms where budget and priority decisions get made, get familiar with the numbers important to the business, volunteer a point of view even when it’s not your lane, and, most importantly, get comfortable asking questions and making “why” your best friend.

Just because it’s always been done a certain way doesn’t mean you have to continue that way. Leadership requires change and putting your stamp on things, so embrace the creative side of your brain and get stamping!

My last piece of advice is for the girls and women reading this. Part of stepping into commercial leadership is deciding what kind of leader you become, and I strongly believe that includes lifting other women as you go. If you’re early in your career, find a female colleague you can learn from, someone who’ll remind you it’s okay to ask questions and advise you with care. If you can mentor a woman earlier in her journey, do it. Advocate for her, share what you know, and encourage her to step outside her comfort zone. Because that, as much as any P&L or campaign result, is what strategic leadership actually looks like: the decisions you shape in other people, not just the ones you make for the business.

About Rachel Ennis

Rachel Ennis is a strategic and hands-on marketing leader with 15 years of experience across B2B and B2C marketing. As Marketing Director at CACTUS, she leads strategy, brand, thought leadership, events, and content for its B2B business. Her expertise spans data-driven product marketing, international growth, cross-functional collaboration, and team leadership. Having begun her career at Omnicom Media Group, Rachel combines commercial thinking, creativity, and insight-led storytelling to drive meaningful marketing impact.

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Dhairya Tandon, Sr. Marketing Manager, SAARC at Recorded Future, shares valuable insights on building pipeline-focused GTM strategies across diverse and evolving markets. He explores the evolution of field and demand generation, regional campaign execution, marketing-sales alignment, data-driven measurement, and AI’s growing role in helping marketers make smarter, more impactful business decisions.

Welcome to the interview series, Dhairya. Could you please tell us about yourself and your marketing journey?

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this interview series.

I have spent close to a decade in B2B tech marketing, mostly in field and demand generation roles across APAC and SAARC in organizations like Gartner, SHL, Denodo, Recorded Future, and Mastercard. My journey started right after my MBA in Marketing, when I moved into pre-sales and marketing; that’s really where I learned how sales and marketing need to work as one engine, not two separate functions. Watching how a lead moves from a conversation at an event to an actual deal in the pipeline taught me early on that marketing isn’t just about creating awareness; it’s about creating momentum that sales can actually act on.

Over the years, that’s taken me across different markets and industries, working on everything from large-scale roadshows and roundtables to partner marketing, ABM programs, and flagship customer events. Each region has its own rhythm, and I have genuinely enjoyed adapting strategies to local markets while still trying everything back to a global GTM narrative.

One of the things I enjoy most about marketing is that it gets you to interact with people, business, and technology all at once. No two days look the same. One day you are deep in a budget conversation, the next you are on stage at an event, and the day after that you are sitting with a CXO trying to understand what actually matters to them.

But honestly, the thing I care most about is building marketing programs that sales teams actually want to use, not just programs that look good on paper. Because at the end of the day, the pipeline is the real scorecard, and if what we build doesn’t help sales close deals, it hasn’t done its job.

What major shifts have you seen in B2B marketing strategies with the rise of digital channels and automation?

The biggest shift, I’d say, is the move from broadcast marketing to intent-based marketing. Earlier, we would send the same email campaign to an entire database and hope for the best. Now, with platforms like Eloqua, Marketo, and HubSpot, we can track intent signals, behavior, and engagement, and personalize outreach at a level that just wasn’t possible before. Marketing has become far more data-driven. Every campaign is now tied back to pipeline and ROI in a way that’s tracked in real time through SFDC.

Channel fragmentation—a decade ago, email and events were basically it. Now you are managing social media, paid digital, ABM platforms, partner marketing, and community-led channels all at once, and the real skill isn’t running any one of them well; it’s orchestrating all of them so they tell one consistent story to the buyer.

And finally, automation has changed the role of the marketer. We’re spending less time on manual execution and more time on strategy, segmentation, and interpreting data. Ironically, even though everything is more automated, the human judgment of knowing which account to prioritize and which message will actually land with a CISO or a CXO matters more than ever.

How have your field marketing experiences across India and South Africa influenced the way you plan and execute regional campaigns?

Working across regions as different as India and South Africa taught me something early on: you simply cannot run a ‘one-size-fits-all’ campaign and expect it to land the same way everywhere. At SHL, I was responsible for field marketing across India and South Africa, and even within that mandate, the differences were stark. India is a high-volume, price-sensitive market where digital campaigns and webinars and in-person engagement generate strong traction. South Africa, on the other hand, still leans heavily on relationship-led, in-person engagement; trust is built face-to-face before a deal moves forward.

The first thing I do is localize the GTM strategy, not just the messaging. It’s not enough to translate an email or tweak a subject line. You have to understand the buying behavior, budget cycles, and even cultural nuances of decision-making in each market. A CXO in Mumbai and a CXO in Pretoria might have the same title, but their priorities, procurement processes, and even how they prefer to be engaged can be completely different.

Partner and vendor ecosystems: In markets like South Africa, third-party vendor relationships and local partner marketing often matter more than direct brand campaigns, because trust is intermediated through local players. That’s very different from India, where direct engagement and brand visibility tend to drive more traction.

What strategies have you found effective for connecting event marketing with broader demand generation and pipeline goals?

This is something I have refined over the years, because early in my career, events and demand generation were treated almost as separate work streams; events were about visibility and brand, while pipeline generation was a ‘sales’ problem. I have come to believe that’s the wrong way to think about it. Every event should be designed as a demand generation engine from the start, not just a brand activity that we hope produces leads as a side effect.

The first strategy that’s worked consistently for me is building pipeline intent into the event design itself. Before we even plan the agenda or the venue, we ask: who are we trying to reach, what stage of the funnel are they in, and what’s the next action we want them to take? Whether it’s a large flagship conference or a smaller roundtable, I make sure the format matches the intent. Roundtables and roadshows are great for warming up mid-funnel accounts through direct conversation, while larger conferences work better for top-of-funnel visibility and brand credibility.

The second is tight integration between events and CRM/marketing automation. Every event I run is tied directly into SFDC and platforms like Eloqua or Marketo from day one; registration, attendance, engagement, and follow-up are all tracked as part of a single campaign record. This lets us measure ROI against pipeline, not just against attendee counts or leads captured. A well-attended event that doesn’t convert into a tracked pipeline isn’t a success in my book, no matter how good the feedback was.

The third is BDR and pre-sales alignment before, during, and after the event. And finally, I always go back and close the loop on ROI. At the end of every quarter, I look at which events actually contributed to pipeline and revenue and use that to reallocate the budget for the next cycle.

“The pipeline is the real scorecard, and if what we build doesn’t help sales close deals, it hasn’t done its job.”

How do you align marketing and sales teams when executing integrated campaigns across multiple markets?

Alignment between marketing and sales is something I have had to actively build in every role, because left unmanaged, the two functions naturally drift apart; sales wants leads now, marketing wants to nurture properly, and without a shared framework, that tension just creates friction instead of results.

The thing I have found effective is establishing shared metrics from day one and involving sales and BDR teams early in campaign planning, not just at handoff. Whether it’s a regional roadshow or an integrated digital campaign, sales and marketing need to agree on what ‘success’ actually looks like before a campaign launches—not MQLs in isolation, but qualified pipeline and revenue contribution. At Recorded Future and Denodo, every campaign I build in SFDC is tracked against pipeline generated, not just leads captured, and that shared scoreboard removes a lot of the ‘marketing brought bad leads versus sales didn’t follow up’ arguments before they even start.

Which metrics do you use to assess the impact of marketing campaigns on pipeline generation and business outcomes?

Top-of-funnel engagement metrics, followed by pipeline-specific metrics, followed by conversations across the funnel, and finally cost per opportunity and ROI: things like event attendance, webinar registrations, email open and click-through rates, and social engagement. These matter, but only as leading indicators. I never treat them as success metrics on their own; they are just signals that tell us whether the campaign is generating enough initial interest to work with. The real measure comes from understanding how those signals translate into qualified conversations, pipeline progression, revenue contribution, and ultimately measurable business outcomes.

How has AI impacted the planning and execution of your marketing programs?

On the planning side, AI has made audience segmentation and targeting far more precise. Platforms like Marketo and Eloqua now layer in predictive scoring, so instead of manually guessing which accounts are sales-ready, we get AI-driven signals on intent and engagement that help prioritize where to focus limited budget and BDR time.

On content and execution, AI has compressed timelines dramatically. Copywriting, first drafts of campaign messaging, and even structuring webinar content or event follow-up sequences—a lot of that ideation now happens in a fraction of the time it used to. Overall, I would say AI hasn’t replaced the core skills of field marketing; it’s raised the floor. The baseline execution is faster and smarter, which means the real differentiator now is strategic thinking, market intuition, and relationship management—the things AI still can’t do for you.

About Dhairya Tandon:

With nearly a decade of experience in field marketing and marketing automation, Dhairya Tandon specializes in ABM, demand generation, CRM, email marketing, digital campaigns, and virtual events. He brings expertise across platforms, including HubSpot, Marketo, Eloqua, Salesforce, and Mailchimp, leading campaigns from strategy and execution through reporting. His strengths in database segmentation, campaign optimization, customer engagement, and cross-functional collaboration enable him to build scalable, data-driven marketing programs that deliver meaningful business outcomes.

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Generation Z is entering the B2B workforce as technology purchasing becomes increasingly digital, self-directed, and influenced by AI-assisted research. As more Gen Z professionals take roles in IT procurement, operations, marketing, and business functions, they are becoming part of buying committees evaluating enterprise technology. For B2B IT companies, this creates an opportunity to move beyond seller-led funnels and build buyer-enabled journeys that help prospects research, evaluate, validate, and purchase technology with greater confidence.

1. Why B2B IT Buying Is Becoming More Self-Directed

B2B IT buyers have more ways to research technology independently before engaging with vendors, changing how the B2B buying process unfolds. Product websites, technical documentation, customer reviews, analyst resources, industry communities, and AI-powered research tools allow prospects to explore solutions, compare alternatives, and assess potential fit.

This reduces reliance on sales teams for basic product information. Buyers can investigate capabilities, integrations, security requirements, implementation considerations, pricing, and customer experiences before requesting a sales conversation. For B2B IT companies, accessible and credible information is essential. Websites and content should help buyers understand solutions, answer common questions, and evaluate potential business value with minimal friction throughout the B2B buying process.

However, self-directed research does not replace human expertise. Sales and technical teams remain valuable for addressing complex requirements, implementation questions, objections, and stakeholder alignment. Combining self-service resources with expert guidance can support independent research while providing the expertise required for complex technology decisions.

2. How Gen Z Is Changing the B2B IT Buying Process

Gen Z’s growing participation in B2B buying is contributing to a broader shift toward self-directed technology research. As buyers increasingly evaluate enterprise technology independently, B2B IT companies need to make credible, structured information available throughout the B2B buying journey.

B2B Buyers Research Before Engaging Sales

Technology buyers increasingly investigate solutions before contacting vendors. They may review product pages, technical documentation, case studies, security information, integrations, pricing guidance, demonstrations, and independent reviews. For IT vendors, websites need to function as practical research environments where buyers can understand product capabilities, integrations, implementation requirements, and potential fit.

AI Is Becoming Part of the Research Process

AI is changing how buyers gather and process information. Buyers may use AI tools to summarize vendor capabilities, compare alternatives, identify relevant technologies, or understand a category. This growing use of AI research makes the quality and structure of vendor information increasingly important. B2B IT companies need authoritative content that clearly explains products, use cases, technical capabilities, and customer outcomes so buyers can evaluate enterprise technology with greater confidence. 

The B2B Buying Journey Is Becoming Less Linear

A buyer might discover a vendor through search or LinkedIn, use AI research to explore the category, compare competitors, consult colleagues, review technical documentation, and return to the original vendor before requesting a demonstration. These activities can generate additional B2B buying signals that indicate changing levels of interest and intent. Research can also restart when budgets change, new stakeholders enter the process, or technical requirements evolve. Vendors therefore need flexible and connected buying experiences that support buyers throughout the enterprise technology purchasing journey. 

3. The Impact on the B2B Buying Journey

Gen Z‘s growing participation in B2B buying committees is contributing to changes in how IT buyers research, evaluate, and purchase technology. Here is the impact of Gen Z throughout the journey.

Discovery

Research can begin through search engines, LinkedIn, industry communities, peer recommendations, analyst resources, reviews, or AI-powered tools. Vendors need a digital presence that explains the problems they solve before buyers identify a specific supplier. Providing useful information early can create a more connected B2B buying experience and help buyers progress to deeper research.

Research

B2B buyers may explore product documentation, use cases, technical specifications, customer experiences, integrations, security requirements, and implementation models. Structured, authoritative information can help buyers understand both the category and the relevance of a solution without immediately relying on sales teams.

Evaluation

Buyers compare vendors based on capabilities, integrations, security, scalability, pricing, deployment requirements, implementation complexity, customer support, and expected business outcomes. As more research happens independently, vendors need to support evaluation without adding unnecessary friction to sales cycles.

Validation

Before committing, buying committees need evidence that a vendor can deliver. Customer references, case studies, technical documentation, security resources, demonstrations, and access to subject-matter experts can reduce uncertainty and strengthen the B2B buying experience.

Decision

Final decisions often involve IT, finance, procurement, security, business leadership, and end users. Executive summaries, business cases, comparison documents, pricing information, security resources, and implementation plans can help stakeholders evaluate the same solution from different perspectives and reach consensus.

Post-Purchase

The journey continues after the contract is signed. Onboarding, implementation, training, support, product adoption, and ongoing communication influence customer outcomes while creating opportunities for retention, expansion, and advocacy.

4. What B2B IT Companies Need to Change

B2B IT companies need to rethink how they support B2B buyers throughout the technology purchasing journey. Buyers should be able to access product capabilities, technical documentation, integrations, security requirements, implementation details, pricing guidance, and customer evidence without immediately engaging sales. This can create a more efficient B2B buying experience while reducing unnecessary friction across B2B sales cycles.

Content should also address the priorities of different stakeholders. Technical teams may focus on integrations and architecture, IT procurement on commercial terms, security teams on compliance and risk, and business leaders on ROI and strategic outcomes. As AI becomes part of technology research, companies should create authoritative, structured content covering products, use cases, technical concepts, comparisons, and customer results. Clear information can support both human and AI-assisted research.

Companies should also track B2B buying signals beyond form fills and lead volume. Account research, product engagement, repeat visits, content consumption, stakeholder participation, and movement toward evaluation can provide stronger insight into buying intent. Finally, digital and human experiences should remain connected. Sales teams should build on the research buyers have already completed, focusing conversations on complex requirements and decision-making needs rather than repeating basic information.

Conclusion

Gen Z is becoming an increasingly important participant in B2B technology buying as more members enter roles with influence over IT and business decisions. Their growing participation coincides with broader changes in how modern buyers research, compare, validate, and purchase technology. For B2B IT companies, the response is not simply to create more digital marketing. It is to build buyer-enabled journeys that combine accessible product information, structured content for AI-assisted research, technical resources, customer evidence, self-service evaluation, and meaningful human expertise. Ultimately, the goal is to help buyers move confidently from discovery and research to technical evaluation, organizational consensus, purchase, and successful adoption.

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A strong B2B brand does more than create recognition. It shapes how buyers perceive value, evaluate options, and make decisions. As B2B buying journeys become more complex, companies need brand strategies that connect positioning, messaging, buyer needs, and business priorities. Building brand equity is no longer simply about awareness; it can influence trust, consideration, demand, pipeline, and long-term growth. In this article, we explore how modern B2B branding companies can develop a strategic brand foundation, understand their ideal customers and buying committees, strengthen positioning and messaging, connect brand with B2B demand generation, and measure its impact on meaningful business outcomes.

1. Brand strategy vs. brand identity vs. brand positioning

Brand strategy, brand identity, and B2B brand positioning are closely connected but serve different purposes. B2B brand strategies are the overarching plan that defines how a company builds, communicates, and grows its brand to achieve business goals. It connects audience needs, market opportunities, differentiation, messaging, and long-term growth.

Brand identity is how the company presents itself. It includes its name, logo, visual language, tone of voice, b2b brand messaging style, and other recognizable elements that shape how the brand appears across channels. B2B brand positioning defines where the brand stands in the market and how it is perceived relative to competitors. It clarifies the audience the company serves, the problem it solves, the value it provides, and why buyers should choose it.

Together, these elements create a cohesive brand: strategy provides direction, identity creates recognition, and positioning establishes relevance and differentiation.

2. Understanding Today’s B2B Buyer

Today’s buyer is more informed, independent, and digitally driven than ever. Instead of relying on sales representatives for information, buyers conduct extensive research online, compare alternatives, evaluate peer opinions, and consume content before engaging with vendors. Their journeys are rarely linear and often involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities, from executives and finance teams to IT and end users.

Modern B2B buyers are also looking beyond products and features. They want solutions that address specific business challenges, demonstrate measurable value, integrate with existing systems, and provide a seamless experience. Trust, credibility, transparency, security, and long-term partnership increasingly influence purchasing decisions.

For B2B brands, this shift means visibility must begin well before a sales conversation. Buyers expect relevant, useful information across search, websites, social channels, communities, and other digital touchpoints. Content must answer questions, address stakeholder concerns, and support buyers throughout their independent research. A strong brand strategy therefore needs to meet buyers where they are, understand what influences their decisions, and build confidence long before they enter a formal sales conversation.

3. Defining Your ICP and Buying Committee in B2B 

Successful B2B marketing starts with understanding who is most likely to buy, what drives their decisions, and who influences the purchase. Here are the steps to identify your ideal B2B buyers.

3.1 Ideal Customer Profile

An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the type of organization that is the best fit for your solution. Key characteristics can include company size, industry, revenue, geography, technology stack, growth stage, and existing business challenges. A well-defined ICP helps teams prioritize high-value accounts instead of pursuing every possible prospect.

3.2 Buyer Personas

Within each target account, different stakeholders have different motivations. Buyer personas represent these individuals based on their roles, goals, challenges, responsibilities, and influence. For example, a CMO may prioritize revenue and brand impact, while a technology leader may focus on integration, security, and scalability.

3.3 Buying Committees

B2B purchases rarely involve one decision-maker. A buying committee may include executives, budget owners, technical evaluators, end users, procurement teams, and legal or security stakeholders. Mapping these roles helps marketers create relevant b2b brand messaging for each participant while maintaining a consistent value proposition.

3.4 Customer Pain Points

Understanding customer pain points is essential for connecting brand marketing solutions to real business needs. These may include inefficient processes, rising costs, fragmented data, security risks, poor customer experiences, or difficulties scaling operations.

3.5 Business Priorities and Buying Triggers

Buyers are more likely to engage when a solution supports an important business priority or responds to a specific trigger. Leadership changes, new regulations, technology investments, rapid growth, budget shifts, competitive pressure, or operational challenges can accelerate purchasing decisions.

3.6 Regional and Industry Differences

ICP characteristics and buying behavior can vary significantly across industries and regions. Regulatory requirements, market maturity, cultural preferences, budgets, and purchasing processes can influence how organizations evaluate solutions. Adapting messaging and engagement strategies to these differences enables more relevant and effective B2B brand campaigns.

4. Building a Strong B2B Brand Positioning Framework

A strong brand positioning framework helps businesses clearly define their market space, differentiate from competitors, address customer needs, communicate unique value, and build a consistent, compelling brand identity.

4.1 Market/Category Positioning

Clearly define the market or category where your brand competes and the space you want to own in customers’ minds. Consider your target audience, market needs, category expectations, and emerging opportunities. A well-defined position makes it easier for prospects to understand what your brand offers and why it matters.

4.2 Competitor Analysis

Analyze competitors to understand how they position themselves, communicate their value, serve customers, and differentiate their offerings. Examine their strengths, weaknesses, b2b brand messaging, pricing, customer experience, and market reputation. This analysis can reveal positioning gaps and opportunities to create a stronger, more relevant position in the market.

4.3 Differentiation

Identify what makes your brand meaningfully different from competing alternatives. Differentiation may come from technology, expertise, innovation, customer experience, product capabilities, service quality, pricing, or a distinctive business model. Focus on differences that are valuable to customers, credible, and difficult for competitors to easily replicate.

4.4 Customer Problems

Effective positioning begins with understanding the problems your customers are trying to solve. Identify their biggest challenges, frustrations, risks, unmet needs, and operational barriers. Connecting your brand to these problems demonstrates customer understanding and helps position your solution as relevant, useful, and capable of delivering meaningful business outcomes.

4.5 Unique Value

Define the unique value your brand provides to customers and connect it directly to their priorities. Explain how your solution improves their situation through measurable benefits such as greater efficiency, reduced costs, improved security, stronger customer experiences, increased productivity, or faster B2B growth compared with available alternatives.

4.6 Positioning Statement

Turn your positioning strategy into a concise statement that communicates who you serve, what category you operate in, the value you provide, and why you are different. A clear positioning statement creates a foundation for consistent messaging across marketing b2b brand campaigns, sales conversations, content, websites, and customer communications.

5. Creating Clear and Consistent Brand Messaging

A strong B2B brand strategy depends on messaging that is clear, consistent, and relevant across every customer touchpoint. Consistent messaging builds familiarity, strengthens credibility, and makes it easier for buyers to understand why your brand is worth considering.

5.1 Define the Core Brand Message

Start with a clear core brand message that captures who you serve, what you offer, the problem you solve, and the value you deliver. Keep it simple enough for teams across marketing, sales, and customer success to understand and use consistently. This message should serve as the foundation for all other brand communications.

5.2 Build Messaging Pillars

Develop a small set of messaging pillars that support your core positioning. These pillars can focus on key customer challenges, differentiators, outcomes, or areas of expertise. They give content and campaigns a consistent narrative while allowing teams to adapt the message for different audiences and use cases.

5.3 Adapt Messaging to Different Audiences

B2B buying groups rarely have identical priorities. A CIO may care about business impact and risk, while a technical leader may focus on integration, scalability, and performance. Create audience-specific messaging that addresses these priorities without changing the underlying brand promise.

5.4 Connect Product Messaging to Customer Value

Product and solution messaging should go beyond features. Explain how your offering solves specific problems and delivers measurable outcomes. Support these claims with relevant proof points, such as customer success stories, data, testimonials, industry recognition, or performance results.

5.5 Differentiate Through Competitive Messaging

Your messaging should also make clear why buyers should choose your brand over alternatives. Identify meaningful points of differentiation rather than relying on generic claims such as “innovative” or “best-in-class.” Focus on the capabilities, expertise, experiences, or outcomes that competitors cannot easily replicate.

5.6 Maintain Consistency Across Channels

Finally, apply your messaging framework across your website, social media, email campaigns, sales conversations, events, and content. The tone and format can change by channel, but the core story should remain recognizable. Regularly review messaging across teams and touchpoints to identify inconsistencies and keep the brand aligned as the business evolves.

6. Connecting Brand Building With B2B Demand Generation

B2B growth becomes more sustainable when brand building and demand generation work together. Brand creates awareness, recognition, trust, and preference, while demand generation marketing turns that attention into engagement, pipeline, and revenue. Instead of treating them as separate activities, businesses should connect both through a unified strategy.

Brand building establishes the foundation for future demand. Consistent messaging, thought leadership, valuable content, customer stories, and strong market visibility help prospects recognize and trust a company before they are ready to buy. This is particularly important in B2B, where purchasing decisions often involve multiple stakeholders and longer sales cycles. Demand generation marketing focuses on capturing and converting existing interest. B2B brand campaigns across search, social media, email, events, content, webinars, and account-based marketing can move prospects from awareness to consideration and eventually toward purchase. However, these activities become more effective when prospects already understand and trust the brand.

The connection between the two begins with shared audiences and messaging. Marketing teams should understand which accounts and personas they want to reach and develop consistent messaging across both brand and demand campaigns. Brand content can create awareness around customer problems, while demand-focused content can provide deeper information that helps prospects evaluate brand marketing solutions. Businesses should also connect brand and demand through the customer journey. A prospect may first encounter a brand through a thought-leadership article or social post, later engage with a webinar, download a guide, visit the website, and eventually request a sales conversation. Each interaction should reinforce the same positioning while providing increasingly relevant information.

Measurement should extend beyond immediate lead generation. Brand metrics such as awareness, reach, engagement, branded search, and share of voice can be evaluated alongside demand metrics such as qualified leads, pipeline, conversion rates, and revenue. Looking at both sets of metrics provides a more complete picture of marketing performance. A B2B brand creates the conditions for demand, while demand converts market interest into business outcomes. Connecting both enables B2B organizations to build long-term preference while generating measurable pipeline and revenue in the short term.

7. B2B Branding Strategy Examples and Success Stories

Successful B2B brands show that a strong brand strategy goes beyond logos and visual identity. The most effective brands create distinctive positioning, communicate clear value, and build emotional connections with their audiences. Here are some B2B success stories that demonstrate effective brand marketing strategy:

7.1 HubSpot: 

HubSpot built its brand by championing inbound marketing and educating businesses about a new approach to customer acquisition. Through blogs, guides, free tools, and educational resources, it consistently connected the brand with accessible marketing expertise. This content-led strategy helped HubSpot establish strong category recognition. Key lesson: Raising awareness of audiences can strengthen positioning and establish category leadership.

7.2 Microsoft

Microsoft’s Story Labs platform highlights employees across the organization, from researchers and developers to designers and creators. Instead of focusing only on products and corporate achievements, Microsoft showcases the people behind its technology. This human-centered storytelling makes a global enterprise feel more personal and authentic. Key lesson: Real people and experiences can make B2B brands more relatable.

7.3 Salesforce

Salesforce uses customer success stories to demonstrate how businesses solve challenges and achieve measurable outcomes with its platform. By allowing customers to share their experiences, Salesforce builds credibility while helping prospects understand real-world applications. These stories provide powerful social proof without relying solely on promotional messaging. Key lesson: Customer-led storytelling can make B2B brand claims more credible and persuasive.

7.4 Gainsight

Gainsight helped establish Customer Success as a distinct business function and technology category. Through research, thought leadership, education, and community building, the company consistently promoted the importance of customer retention, expansion, and long-term value. This helped position Gainsight as an authority in the space. Key lesson: Defining and consistently owning a meaningful category can create strong B2B brand differentiation.

8. Common Mistakes and Brand Marketing Solutions: B2B Brand Strategy

A successful B2B branding strategy requires more than strong messaging and creative campaigns. Brands must overcome challenges around attribution, alignment, data, personalization, and changing buyer expectations. Identifying these common mistakes early can help marketing teams build stronger strategies, improve performance, and create more meaningful connections with B2B audiences.

8.1 Poor Marketing Attribution

Challenge: Relying only on last-touch attribution can overlook the influence of content, events, social media, and other early-stage interactions.

Solution: Combine quantitative analytics with self-reported attribution, first-party data, and qualitative insights. Align Marketing, Sales, RevOps, and Finance on shared definitions for measuring pipeline and revenue contribution.

8.2 Sales and Marketing Misalignment

Challenge: Separate goals, account lists, and customer insights can create disconnected B2B brand campaigns and missed opportunities.

Solution: Establish shared ICPs, target accounts, KPIs, and pipeline goals. Use a common CRM or ABM platform as the source of truth, while encouraging regular collaboration, joint account planning, and cross-functional discussions.

8.3 Poor Data Quality

Challenge: Incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate customer data can lead to weak targeting, ineffective personalization, and wasted marketing spend.

Solution: Regularly clean and enrich CRM records with reliable firmographic, technographic, and intent data. For new markets or verticals, validate demand signals and develop audience insights before launching targeted campaigns.

8.4 Personalization Without Trust

Challenge: Overly aggressive personalization can feel intrusive, particularly as buyers become more conscious of how their data is collected and used.

Solution: Build personalization around first-party data, relevant behavioral signals, and transparent consent practices. Segment audiences thoughtfully and provide genuinely useful experiences instead of relying on excessive personal details or automated messaging.

8.5 Failing to Adapt to Buyer Behavior

Challenge: Treating buyers as dependent on traditional sales funnels can leave brands disconnected from increasingly digital, self-directed purchasing journeys.

Solution: Create accessible, value-driven content across the channels buyers use to research brand marketing solutions. Provide educational resources, customer reviews, pricing information, demos, and relevant insights that build trust before a sales conversation begins.

9. Future of B2B Branding Strategy

B2B branding is evolving beyond traditional positioning and corporate messaging. As technology, buyer expectations, and digital experiences change, brands must find new ways to stay relevant, build trust, and create meaningful connections. The future of B2B brand strategies will be shaped by five major shifts.

Hyper-personalization powered by AI will move B2B branding from broad segmentation toward increasingly precise experiences. AI and advanced analytics can help brands understand individual buyer behaviors, preferences, and intent, enabling more relevant content, recommendations, and interactions. As personalization becomes the norm, generic messaging will struggle to capture attention. Brands will need real-time customer insights and journey data to create experiences that feel relevant at every stage.

Purpose-driven branding will also become increasingly important. B2B buyers are paying greater attention to company values, social impact, and authenticity. Brands that clearly connect their business purpose with meaningful action can strengthen trust and differentiate themselves in competitive markets. However, purpose must be demonstrated through genuine practices rather than simply communicated through campaigns. Immersive digital experiences will further reshape B2B engagement. Virtual showrooms, interactive demonstrations, digital events, and augmented reality can make complex products easier to understand while creating richer brand experiences. As digital interactions become central to the B2B buying journey, consistency and quality across every touchpoint will become critical.

The future of B2B branding will belong to organizations that combine technology with human understanding. Brands that personalize intelligently, demonstrate purpose, create engaging experiences, protect customer data, and communicate authentically will be better positioned to build lasting brand equity and loyalty.

Conclusion 

A successful B2B branding strategy is no longer built around visibility alone. It requires a clear understanding of buyers, differentiated positioning, consistent messaging, and meaningful connections between brand building and demand generation marketing. As buying journeys become more digital and complex, brands must create experiences that build trust before prospects engage with sales. At the same time, AI, personalization, immersive experiences, data ethics, and evolving buyer expectations are reshaping how B2B brands compete. Organizations that combine strategic clarity with customer insight, authentic storytelling, and measurable business outcomes can strengthen brand equity while driving sustainable growth.

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