Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, we're back for another session. I am Nate Turner here again with Kevin King. And we're in Q4. Weather's changing, seasons are changing, and that means that planning season is upon us.
Whether folks are either in the middle of it, getting ready for 2026, or, you know, starting to think about what that might look like, depending on company planning cycles, there's a lot. And then we're doing it in the middle of a time when there's a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty. So our approach today, we actually went out and asked five different folks through the industry the same question. And then myself, Kevin and Ryan from our team all answered that question as well. So we have eight different perspectives to the question, which is if you could give one piece of advice to B2B marketing leaders heading into 2026, what would it be? So we are literally going to read verbatim what each person wrote.
Again, these were all written without knowing what anyone else wrote. So they're all written in isolation. So any commonalities and themes that might come through are just sort of a coincidence and a convergence on some similar opinions.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Validating.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Validating for sure. So with that, we will go ahead and jump in. Kevin will kick it off for us. We're going to run through those and then when we finish, we're going to shift into the go through some of the slides and data from the state of B2B go to market report that was put out by Growth Unhinged. So with that, go ahead and get us started.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Sweet. Yeah. First one coming from our alma mater, Sprout Social, Marino Fresh, the VP of marketing there.
His response was, quote, emphasis on speed and agility and planning and execution. In 2026, with AI changing the marketing landscape rapidly, the best thing marketing leaders can do is to move fast. Speed will beat perfection in 2026. So plan fast, execute fast, iterate fast, and learn fast.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: End quote.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Yes.
So speed, progress over perfection and execute are I think, a lot of what kind of came through on that one.
And additionally, part of what we want to just discuss with each one is the nature of the question here elicits a fairly conceptual response from each person because no one's going to have one piece of advice that's super tactical because I don't know if that applies with that. We're also just wanted to kind of help it not be entirely conceptual and talk through a little bit of some different ways that can allow for you to kind of apply some of this. So a couple of things I wrote down for this tied to Marino's comment was like plan quarterly and then just I think with that kind of aligning with leadership on the approach and measurement. So it will help a ton for marketing leaders if they get alignment with the exec and the board to know that hey, this is our approach. There's a lot of change. Here's how and when we're going to communicate. This is the extent of what we're going to measure. If you ask us to try to get way more certainty on roi, it's probably going to grind everything to a halt.
Let's align on this and probably just adjust quarterly. I think our a couple of things that would really help with the speed and agility that he talked about and just allowing you to then execute fast.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yes, I think this is going to be also not a spoiler alert but a theme that is kind of a theme throughout but it makes sense. The industry is moving fast as implied and I think, I mean more of an observation than anything is that it's a good thing for us, I think as an industry not to move fast without being being thoughtful. But I think historically, which is a little bit of a spoiler from my probably response but historically like marketing teams and businesses in general just spend a lot of time in this planning season and not moving fast. And so like if anything this like pace that things are, are, are, are I guess moving towards the pace that we're moving towards is I think a good thing because I think we're just going to get hopefully more done quicker which is pretty obvious. But. But yeah, I agree with that on how you can enable more speed and agility. It's just like I think the key is going to be communication.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: I think internally especially at in house teams like if they're big teams like closing the loop and getting feedback on things is still going to be critical. Like you're not going to be able to do things without getting full buy in. So if anything I would say marketing leaders should also, they should take this advice but also enable the team and themselves to let them like move freely, like break things and move fast and like nothing's permanent, you can go back and fix it.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Sure. Yep.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: All right, so the next one comes from Camille Rexton. He's the founder of 42 Agency. So a lot of like rev ops, work analytics, working a lot in the kind of B2B SaaS space there.
So Camille said invest more in brand and learn how to measure brand. Stop equating brand to direct traffic because you need to do more quality because you need to do more qualitative surveys and stuff. Direct traffic doesn't necessarily mean that your brand is working.
You need to understand qualitatively how people think of a brand and what they are considering when they think of your category.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I agree this is important. And the exciting thing for people who own organic, which is obviously our bread and butter brand, is playing such a bigger part in that. I'd say tactically, the thing that I think of when he's talking about this, which we've been talking a lot about, is dashboarding and investing in some tools that surface sentiment. Right. Whatever that may mean. I mean historically it means, you know, positive negative sentiment on a brand. But I think that that's big, that's crucial for the LLM VIS component because LLMs are actually like communicating a sentiment about a brand.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: So there's two folds. But I think that's the bigger tactical takeaway is like updating and iterating on the dashboarding and reporting. You have to incorporate that into your workflow and day to day. Yeah.
While also, which we don't have to get into the weeds on it now, but making sure that you are being proactive about whatever your brand reputation looks like online. That can be pr, digital pr. That's a big, that should be a big focus for you then this year if that's going to be something you're investing in or even just like some, you know, low hanging fruit, opportunities for you to control your brand narrative on your website.
Which I'm happy to elaborate on it.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and I mean building on that, reputation management, we've talked yes. For a while now about the way LLMs are incorporating all of that and really pulling in a lot of perspective on company and the product and everything beyond what you put on your site. So I think that G2 trust radius, like all that type of stuff. I agree.
You know, brand monitoring and sentiment I think are a big one. Engagement as well. I think it's a really good point for Camille that you know, the direct traffic I think has been, you know, for a long time. It's sort of been like oh, paid search and paid social and, and even SEO and some of those channels have been very measurable, very ROI driven and everyone sort of said well, brand is brand and are we getting more direct traffic or you know, that kind of stuff. And I agree that the importance of it has shifted and it is necessary to go beyond that. But it's, you know, I think engagement sentiment, all that Stuff really does, you know, go a couple layers deeper. So obviously our perspective, he probably has a much more refined take on, on some of what that actually means. But I thought it was a really good addition to, to the batch of, of advice here.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: So. Yeah.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: One thing I'd add on that too I think is this is the time that I hope that because I agree with this advice but like that we can finally connect brand and organic efforts. Because historically there was always this like focus on non brand is like the big thing for like SEO teams and all that.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: And that's obviously very important.
But the tides are shifting and like those two things are tightly connected. So like let's just all accept that those two play together. If you're doing really well on the non brand side and brand is going up, that that's likely a correlation and you can associate that there are data points you can pull. But like there's been historically some pushback there, like oh well, our brand. Well, we did this one thing on pr. No, like there's a whole holistic effort there that is very important.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: So I will move on to the next one. Ryan Sargent, our VP of content strategy at 10 speed. Is that what the kids do?
His quote. Marketing in 2026 will be defined by two forces, automation and alchemy. Automate the routine, work to stay visible, then pour your creative creativity into the bold human.
I'm botching it. Marketing in 2026 will be defined by two forces, automation and alchemy. Automate the routine, work to stay visible, then pour your creativity into the bold human. Ideas that make your brand unforgettable. Stop chasing perfection, ship fast, feed the machines context and save your magic for the moments that actually convert human humans.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Thoughts?
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think my takeaway, you know, automate the blocking and tackling and then build to to differentiate, which I think does somewhat again tie into speed and progress over perfection. I think there a little bit of that does kind of come out as a theme.
But you know, on like the automating side, your team's working through a lot. Like you should be doing a lot of automation. On the PM tool side, brief creation, not just content like creative briefs, any of that kind of stuff, ideation, repurposing. These are things that can and should be going faster, taking up less of a team's time.
And then on the other side, video events, podcasts, like thought leadership. Those are the types of things that you really can be like. He said, you know, kind of using the creativity, the human layer, doing things that are going to really kind of like capture that drive conversions, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I think there, there's a, it's a, it's an interesting framing to like the automation and alchemy aspect of it because I do think there is it kind of becoming a bit more of that two track. So from a planning standpoint, I would just say, you know, thinking through that and making sure that where your resources are going are going into the areas that you can impact the most and automate where. Where you can.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the historical quote unquote hamster wheel that I see people talking about on LinkedIn and when it comes to content teams and marketing teams, like, feel like you're on the, like the endless hamster wheel. Like that in my mind is like the fundamentals of what keeps things going.
And what I feel like Ryan's saying here is, is like there's a way to just not have that feel like such a burden. You can, to your point, automate it and all that, which is great. Invest in tools and, you know, AI is a big component of that. But the exciting part of that is being able to. Now, finally, I think myself as a marketer, I always like, wanted to be able to do big, bold, creative things that were the things that could, you know, be bigger lovers for growth, acquire pet backlinks. And, you know, I used to be a big proponent for interactive content and, or interactive things. And like, you now you can go do that. Like, maybe there's tools and stuff that you couldn't do because you had to focus on pumping out a bunch of content every month. Like. Yeah, so I, I think there's. That's a very, A good piece of advice and also, I think an exciting one. Yeah, I agree.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: All right, so next is Bernard Huang from the founder of Clearscope. Um, so Bernard said B2B marketing is seeing its biggest shakeup with the old B2B playbooks losing resonance. Email marketing open rates are declining, SEO traffic is dwindling, cold email rates are still dismal, and roas return on ad spend is getting worse.
So what is there to do? Recognize that the modern buyer is a different breed of buyer. They want to try before they buy. They need your product or service to be far better than basic AI outputs. And most of all, they need to trust and respect your brand.
What do you think about that?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I think Bernard's spot on. He's probably cutting straight to it more so than anybody, you know.
Yeah, it's tough. It's. It's it is a, a different world we're in now and you need to put your content where your buyer is at in the journey, which is not a change in things. But this ties back, I think just the brand sentiment stuff like you need to be focusing your efforts into the areas that are going to make your brand stand out.
And that may include some of the fundamentals which we've touched on that you have to do. But like there's bigger, bolder things. I mean like this is actually starting to be. Feel like a nice kind of summary connection and summary of like the previous things. Yeah.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, I think, you know, innovate playbooks, adapt to modern buyer and earn trust. Are.
Are certainly, you know, three themes that I think come out of there. I think his point that your product or service needs to be better than basic AI outputs is like fantastic.
And that is true across a lot of the product side. Yeah, your product needs to be better than what you can churn out with replit or lovable or cursor, any of that kind of stuff.
I think there's a lot there. So the thing that struck me around the playbook side is think about how many people in the B2B world right now are talking about three things. Reddit, PR and intimate events.
Those are not.
They weren't. Not talked about, but they were not nearly as prevalent two years ago.
And I think even just that's a small slice of the whole picture that I think there is a lot on the playbook side that is changing.
And so yeah, I think there's.
There's a lot there. And I think this is probably more than anything, probably just a good summarization of what a lot of marketing leaders are feeling as they're planning is what are the ways we need to change the playbook and what is going to work, which we'll get into more as well around the B2B go to market report that we'll get into in just a little bit. But yeah. Anything else on that one?
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I hear you.
It's exciting to think that I think the one other point on the trust and respect your brand and your product needs to be better is that we're at a time where hopefully there won't be.
It's weird. There is a. We are in a time where there's so many new products popping up because of AI, which I mean naturally that means everything isn't great. There's a lot of noise. But I don't think, I think it'll be quicker that those we'll see that the ones that aren't as strong die off quicker because of this.
And historically that's what should happen is like the good products or at least the best products in categories should win. And I think that's great. And I would just kind of put a point on it that like even great marketing at this stage within Software especially, or B2B is not going to mask a bad product.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yep, agree.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And also if you want to get schooled, I'd highly recommend getting a demo of Cool Clear Scope because Bernard will yes, teach and do a really great, fantastic background on things, all things SEO.
All right, I'm going to read mine.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're on to me, Kevin King, co founder of 10 Speed Get out of your own way and don't be afraid. Why can't I read this like I'm a normal person saying my own words? But yeah, I'll read it for random get out of your own way and don't be afraid to fail. One of the biggest blockers we are seeing in B2B marketing is teams overthinking every move, stalling out because they're either waiting for a silver bullet, anticipating some major product change from Google or OpenAI or avoiding avoiding anything that feels like it might be from the old playbook.
Fundamentals still work. I'm a big fan of that.
Stay current, but don't let every trend or headline derail what's already in flight.
If you're focused on your audience in aligned with their buyer journey, 75% of your strategy is likely to be effective because it can't be 100. But that's a whole lot better than the 0% sex success rate that comes from doing nothing, which we do see quite a bit like.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: We have had many experiences where we build things and decision indecision is there and you don't get anything done.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah, indecision I think has plagued a lot of people this year and I wrote a pretty long LinkedIn post about.
Yeah, all that which you know, I think will end up kind of coming through and in what I wrote for.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: This as well, I think that might have subconsciously influenced my answer.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, but, but the inaction is material. You know, I was just talking to a CMO yesterday who shared that when talking to CMOs recently there, there are a number of people who kind of got like the analysis paralysis, don't know what to do and are now at that point where they're realizing like oh my gosh, I'm behind. I gotta catch up there's a lot I gotta put into place. So again, a big part of why we wanted to talk about this in general. But yeah, I think that there's a lot going on and to your point, what you've got, if you're really just staying focused on your buyer, adding value, knowing where they spend time, that's far better than doing nothing.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
And also those percentages were made up. Of course, even 50% of your strategy working is better than none of it working. Right.
Just. It's not going to all work all the time.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yep, totally cool. And so then next we had Emily Kramer, founder of MKT1.
Emily said, I think generalists will overtake specialists on in house marketing teams and working with specialists on the agency side to augment your team will be the best model as teams stay lean. So my best advice is you need to add breadth to your skill set. Learn from, from learning to build AI workflows and agents to running differentiated high impact campaigns to stand out amidst the AI slop. I call this new generalist skill set for the generative AI area era a gen marketer. Yes. So, yeah, so Emily's been talking a lot about the gen marketer, which I think makes a lot of sense.
Definitely matches a lot of what we're seeing. You know, her point on is the best model as teams stay lean. That's certainly something that we've seen and heard. Like far like the size of company and the amount of marketers to the size of company has definitely changed.
And there are a lot of companies who have a few folks covering a lot of areas, wearing a lot of hats and augmenting with multiple consultants and agencies.
That's definitely something that we're, we're encountering a lot. Yeah.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: I mean this is a throwback to the T shape marketer, which I think was amaz Rand Fishkin thing. But the T shaped marketer being the generalist that just goes deep in one area. Right. Like that's always been a thing. Thing that I think we've supported or believed in as a potential like added not force multiplier. Yeah, a force multiplier. Added value for an org. So this kind of like I feel like is a new version of that and instead of like the T shape, the one that goes down, you're deep in one area but good across all. It's almost like the T part becomes the agency component to some extent or you can make a different letter with it. But I do think that the era, the generalist is there. So like in AI should enable people to probably pick up a lot more skills.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's interesting you said that because my thought was that the T part would maybe be AI, but actually AI is probably actually what allows more breadth more than anything.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Because it supports you in other areas. But I do think, you know, from a, a planning standpoint I think this can kind of read as like personal career advice but I also actually think that it is very helpful for any, anyone planning like how do we, how do we manage headcount and like, you know, what do we want to do with what are the most important roles we need? I think this is actually, you know, extremely helpful for that.
And that's true. I mean that's a lot of what we've seen currently. Like we as an agency and I think in other agencies are in most cases have adapted to a lot of the stuff with LLMs and figured out a lot of stuff faster than in house because we have so many more at bats more places that we're learning faster. And so I think that's definitely an area Lately it's like no one has an AEO specialist on their team in house. So I think that's a perfect example of where leaning onto people creates that speed. So yeah, I just put like deep dive into AI workflows, figure out what you can do well whether you personally, if you're the only marketer or your team and then you know where it makes sense to outsource.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, I agree.
Cool.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: And then we'll jump into mine. Nate Turner co founder of 10 speed I said don't wait around for the dust to settle on change to make decisions. Change is constant and has been even more so in the last 18 months and doesn't appear to be slowing down. Whether you're relying on an in house team or an outside partner to hit your goals, make sure they can pivot quickly as necessary and get started now.
And so yeah, go ahead.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: No, I will say because I think I was saying like ours had some overlap or thought some had, had some overlap. But I think there's actually a big difference here which is because I was saying about indecision, you're talking about being able to like quickly change direction, which is I think important and I think no, historically teams have not wanted to do that. So I think from a planning perspective, how do you. It's about finding ways to make sure that the team is enabled to do that. Whether that be like shorter planning cycles so you can have a time to revisit it. I wouldn't say monthly. We do quarterly. We've always, honestly, I think our quarterly roadmaps have like, we've been doing that for a long time. Have been helpful and maybe you can just take that approach, right. Like break it down into smaller chunks so that you're not feeling like you're committing to things for a long period of time. And if you're small, you could probably do it like 60 days or 90 days or 90 days this quarter. But you know what I mean. So I think that that's, I think a powerful piece of advice for everybody is to like that should a lot that should enable you to get out of your way from like indecisiveness is that give yourself the freedom to change direction if you need to quickly because now you have more tools than ever to be able to do it.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. And a big part of what I didn't, I didn't want to put in here because it would make it for a quite long quote. But the, a big part of that is like if you have done as a company, like haven't touched anything around LLMs or AEO yet, like, the reality is there are people who have, even to your point earlier, maybe 50% hit rate or whatever.
The amount of the speed at which things move now, the amount of work it takes to catch up, let alone outperform competitors by sitting that out for six months to see is it worth investing in SEO, is it worth investing in aeo? All these different things I think are slowing down and the clients that we have that have kept their foot on the gas have seen like no. Basically no fall off in organic traffic where, where it matters anyway. There's, you know, certainly some pockets that do. But versus, you know, some of the stats that are out there about the amount of organic traffic loss and shipping lms.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: And are seeing good performance. Like it's, they're, they're hitting on multiple fronts because they, they didn't slow down. And so now their competitors have to work that much harder to catch up.
And that's my point in that post was like I broke down from 2020 through 2025. All the excuses or reasons why people were waiting on the sidelines or waiting a quarter or waiting how this plans out. There's so many things that just come every single year.
You're just missing out. And now with the way that everything's speeding up, I think it's just putting you that much further behind. So. Yep, that was a big part of my point. We can move on to the last one.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Me or you you can read it.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
Kyle Poyer Founder, Growth Unhinged said, quote, too many companies are keeping their teams busy tinkering with all the legacy go to market channels plus AI search intent based outbound founder brand and testing out the latest AI tooling. It's time for the experimentation window to close in the period of ruthless scaling to begin.
And the one thing I'll say is that actually is a nice segue into the next topic that we'll talk about because I think that's a trend for the past year is the experimentation.
So I'll stop there and let you.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So again, I think this is. We've had multiple. You've probably picked up on.
Again, these were all done separately but there is very much a theme of speed, progress over perfection and committing to execution that have come through nearly all of these. And so I think that makes a lot of sense and we are going to transition in a moment to go through the Growth Unhinged report that we mentioned that Kyle authored or co authored. I don't remember, I'd kind of looked up. And they're similar to your point, Kevin. They're, you know, some quotes around like 80% today is better than 100% tomorrow.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: And like Colin Powell I think was kind of somewhat famous for quoting like make a decision when you have 40 to 70% of the information because, you know, waiting and trying to get that last 30%, you know, closes that window for action and obviously moving with less than 40% is probably prone to error.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: So certainly not just swinging in the dark by any means. But I think that there's a lot of legacy wisdom that applies here and I think that Kyle's points are spot on that there's been a lot of testing. I like that he used the word tinkering because I think that has been like we're doing legacy stuff and then we're just kind of tinkering with all these tools and other things and it's kind of just time to commit. And so again, to the point of planning for next year, I think it's time to say here's the things that we're committing to and we know we're going to do and we're going to scale and then still having some.
You always should have an experimentation lane. Yeah, Lane of what you're doing. But yeah, I think there's some great stuff there.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. Yeah. I think if at this point there's been enough time testing and changes that like we're at a point where things should be Everything's going to keep changing but like you should have a good handle on what's working. So invest and then make pivot change quickly later if it's not working again, you know.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Cool. So we're, we're about to shift to the report.
I will say I appreciate all the contributions to kind of providing that advice from everyone. So we will have links to LinkedIn profiles in the show notes if you want to go connect or check out content from any one of the folks that we mentioned.
And so with that, this was recently released, the state of B2B go to market report. And so it's a 30 page report.
Not gonna go through that whole thing.
But Kyle did a nice breakdown of kind of like the key takeaways and some charts there. So we're actually just gonna kind of walk through and give some context. So this obviously spans all go to market. There's, you know, outbound sales and all kinds of stuff that, you know, we will certainly kind of tailor our commentary to stay in our lane a bit and not necessarily talk about everything.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: But.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Definitely some interesting stuff. So we thought again, in the context of planning for next year, there's definitely some good, good insights and things to take away. So we can go ahead to the first slide.
And so this is kind of out of everything that they surveyed on. Again, you can see the methodology. We'll link to the summary. It was 195B2B go to market professionals that were surveyed. So that's kind of there and they have more on the methodology you can check out. But inbound number one and specifically kind of the context that was set there was content creation to generate leads.
So something we're obviously very familiar with that is still considered the primary motion for B2B companies at this point.
I think it does tailor into some of these other areas. And we know content creation is a very broad concept. I mean all the way case studies, webinars, blog posts, that's pretty broad. So it spans a lot. But there's certainly a lot that goes into that, but definitely validating. And I think some of the following data points will give more context to what inbound means, since that's a pretty big channel overall, for sure.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it encompasses more than just an SEO and all that. But at the end of the day there it's tied to some of the points. Earlier I know we talked about the old playbook, but like it looks like that a lot of the channels that are still fruitful or tied to things associated with the old playbook Inbound being the number one thing that people are investing in content creation and all that. Like just adapt to the modern buyer. Like people have been. I think the takeaway I got from this is that like there's a perception that, and we talked about this on a previous episode, that you need to like abandoned, completely abandon what you were doing before when this data just supports like a shift in focus on like the same kind of things you were doing but just in a different way. But like the narrative online is just abandoned. Like, no, that's not working. Like shift, go do something different, try something new. And like it's really just a little bit of a optimization amongst the channels and things that you've been focused on.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think that like I said some of the later points and then we'll wrap up. There's some insights as well on kind of like AI adoption and the ROI there that I think gives some really good context to what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the next slide is broken down.
Yeah, go ahead, Luke.
So taking that same categorization, first looking by ACV, so less than 5k 5 to 25k and then greater than 25k.
So we have clients across all three of those.
I personally was not surprised by this.
You have inbound number one in that middle category, product led far more common at that low ACV and ABM far more common at the high acv.
So not terribly surprising but sounds also.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Not different from how it used to be.
That's not a, that's no shade on the report. It's more of like just validation. So good job on the that Kyle.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And then obviously inbound still holding, you know, 16 and 19% on those other ACVs. And so I think that makes sense. And like I said, I don't want to comment too far, but paid digital also pretty common that we, we see that a lot on that, that lower ACV hitting, you know, the 26% for less than 5K and then down to 4% for that higher ACV. Yeah, definitely tracks.
But again there's a lot of nuance into how people perceive each of these categories. Or you know, do they, do they consider paid digital spend part of account based or separate? Like that's why I don't want to get too far into all of it. But yeah, and then the next slide. Yeah, thank you. Is taking the same stuff and looking at it by where they're at on ARR scale.
So again have clients in all these and I think that my takeaway on this Was logical. Inbound being number one on those 1 million to greater than 10 million.
But product led being number one on that. That lower. Yeah, yeah, that, that one I wasn't sure but like I guess on the inbound side it made sense. Like you're gonna have more brand, you have more domain authority. Like you've just been building longer.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: That, that all of that can.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Kind of accumulate.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: I guess I think the other thing too which is you can push back on me if you disagree obviously. But like the product LED in the.
There's a lot like a connective line between the product LED in the inbound stuff for both sides of that.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: So like product LED does not like succeed. Like you invest there because your product is capable of being product led. But that is directly tied to even outbound. You can do like that align through all those. But tied to the inbound efforts that fit feed into the product.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: So I think that that's important more I guess pointedly it's like makes sense those two things are winning for those categories. Even if you looked at I think the inbound on the. That was another big. That was like the second biggest.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Or one of the. Yeah. On the. By average acv.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Yeah. It was the third outside of paid. But yeah.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Yeah. The.
Yes, I agree. Ultimately, yeah. They're almost inbound and outbound Product led and account based paid digital and partners are almost kind of like subcategories there and there's going to be some Venn diagram.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Yeah. For sure. So anyway, I don't know.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Paid digital rip.
Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: I will say I did think it was interesting that.
That the paid digital side was larger for the higher revenue side.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: Because I know that we tend to see a lot of the paid spend on the early stage lower revenue companies where they're just trying to capture that demand and they haven't built everything else up. Right.
Yeah. And then. Yeah. If we can go to the next slide.
Thank you.
So the framing here was around kind of like in 2025 which of these motions or channels were core, considered core for the companies go to market and which ones were kind of experimental. So the call out there average SaaS company has roughly 5 core and 5 experiments.
So I think that the interesting things for me with this were one, I was shocked that warm outbound has as much of a stronghold as a core emotion for people as it does.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: But can you define warm upbound for the audience?
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I'll let contact do that. But yeah. So LinkedIn not surprising SEO not surprising. I think that despite people wanting to claim that that's dead. Very much not. And it makes sense that especially through this year that that's remained a core motion.
And then I was a little surprised that large conferences were considered experiment. However, I think given that a lot of that's been trying to build back since COVID that there are probably a lot of companies who haven't ever done it, but are now trying to.
And then again, intent based outbound, I think that makes sense as experimentation and was not surprised at all to see 47% having the AI discovery AEO stuff as something that they've been experimenting with this year. Yep.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Also warm. Outbound indicates the prospect has a prior engagement or connection with you, while intent based outbound indicates there's a signal of buyer interest.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Which makes sense.
That's just good context. Yeah, yeah. I. Yeah, it's very interesting to see. I do like that the large conferences are. Were a bigger one. I mean not in the experimentation. I mean obviously it's core too. Yeah. So there's equal because that had a struggle for a while. I'm happy to see that that's coming back because that means that, you know, I think that just shows that if you have a good product, you're going to invest in going out and talking to people. Like there's a authenticity connected to that. I think that should play into your bigger brand perception, which is good.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: I also wanted to call out, I think there, if you think about all the stuff that we went through on the advice from everyone, there's a lot that does feel like a really solid through line here.
Like intimate in person events. 43% said core, 28% experiment. So fairly high on both of those.
Founder brand is another one that I think came through the AEO for sure podcast.
Not a big core motion, but was definitely on the higher side for experimentation. And then PR also again kind of on that. Who would have thought that PR would be considered an experimentation channel?
You know, at this point, Again, kind of my point earlier versus two years ago. And the reality is that it is a new. There's new approaches and new motions. I think that are why people are experimenting with that. That ties to that new buyer journey. The trust signals trust I think comes through on podcasts, founder brand, intimate in person events like that's those are all very much the trust.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: Authority type of things too.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: So the report also in. In more detail says that like 51% plan to increase go to market and investment in AI search. Do you think that that means like they do this next year.
If that becomes core.
It's already fairly high in the core and not super high, but it's got a high experimentation number. Does the like, does that shift. Do all those kind of shift over into core over like in the next year or two?
[00:41:12] Speaker A: Well, potentially, because that's zooming out a bit on that. The commentary from the report. It said Looking ahead, B2B companies seem more prepared to add GTM channels than subtract them. And then it said areas where they're increasing GTM the most. Like you mentioned, AEO 51% plan to increase. Increase GTM investment in AI search.
By comparison, only 14% to increase SEO investment.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Which is not saying that they're decreasing investment. It's. That's already so high on the core.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: That it's logical that there are less people investing in that as an additional channel, but AEO much newer coming in. So.
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, there's a lot there. I think this is super helpful context. And then the next slide.
This was interesting. So obviously on the X axis you have popularity across B2B tech and then the Y you have likelihood of having a big impact.
And so the black box, considered tried and true, we'll call it SEO specifically to start.
Makes sense that you know, your popularity across B2B tech is. It's almost all the way the right.
And then from like a likelihood of having big impact because it has become highly competitive. And obviously some of the ambiguity around AI search as well does not surprise me that it, you know, if you done this exact thing two years ago, it probably would have been as far right and just higher on the scale would be my guess.
So trending down towards oversaturated but still kind of hanging out in there.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I sense the AI search will be the next big thing that'll move up and. Sorry, we'll move up into the black box like we just said. I a bunch of these other ones. When you like, like see it laid out like this, figuring it out for B2B brands even across the spectrum, I don't know if that ends up working.
Like Instagram for example. I, I don't know what changed within Instagram, but I don't. I, I know there's a few, a few brands. I think even like ClickUp does some really fun interesting stuff on Instagram or on there like on TikTok and social. So like I think they found something on. I don't know how successful it is, but they like make money videos that are like, in line with what you'd see from like YouTube or from influencers and stuff. So I think there's a path, but I don't know if it ends up becoming like the tried and true for B2B.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That feels like a lot of dots to connect.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Or, you know, a wide space to connect those dots of, you know, funny videos being material. I mean, there's probably whatever brand loyalty and stuff like that.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Brand perception, though, if we're talking about it, that could be a thing. If you're really good on that, like in the product's.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Then maybe that helps influence things in sentiment.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Across the, the web.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I guess my point is I, I, I need it to do what I need it to do.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Whether or not they make funny videos and if it's, if I'm a customer and it's not doing what it needs to do for my team, like, those videos are not keeping me there.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: But I agree, I understand they have some place in the mix if you can pull that quadrant back up.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Again, we talked about a little bit with the new motions or like the adapting the, the buyer. Modern buyer.
Reddit podcast. Excuse me? Reddit podcast, PR are all there. I, you know, B2B, like TikTok and Instagram.
I'm honestly surprised those are higher on the likelihood of having a big impact scale than Reddit podcast or pr. But I think that makes sense to your point. AI search is clearly moving up into the right on this, so I think that's, that's headed that way.
And then, you know, founder, brand, LinkedIn, I think those are largely falling in content responsibilities, you know, overall, whether that's written content, video, any of that stuff. So, yeah, I think there's a lot there. But again, just in general, there's some of our commentary, but I think overall there's a lot of insights for anyone who's planning for next year and then next slide, I think we did just a couple more. So this was that same breakdown of ACV that we saw earlier, but instead of now, instead of looking at it from the inbound, outbound, paid, digital abm, all those categorizations, it's now looking a little more specific at the channel.
And so what's interesting is you see SEO claims number one spot as being the positioning here. Is it in your top three channel? So we're looking at 44% saying SEO is in their top three channels for less than 5K ACV.
So I think there's a Huge tie there to that product led motion for sure.
And then tied for second in that 5 to 25k ACV.
I was a little surprised since inbound was high, you know, for some of the, I guess it wasn't the top one, but I was surprised it didn't at least make top three.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess it's not on here.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: For the greater than 25k but, but generally I think this makes sense. Like the larger acv, large conferences, intimate events, warm outbound.
Whereas at the lowest ACV you have SEO, paid ads, LinkedIn.
And then if we want to just go ahead and shift the other categorization of less than a million one to 10 million and greater than 10 million arrangements. Yeah.
So then, interesting. That's where you see SEO come in at number two on the greater than 10 million is 43% saying that it's in their top three. And again I think that ties pretty heavily to like the amount of brand authority, domain authority, like just a lot of stuff that's built up over time to get to that revenue scale.
There's probably a lot of good tailwinds for SEO and, and we've been investing in it longer and that kind of stuff for sure.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: I think it's interesting that it's SEO. I mean a lot of them appear across all the categories, but SEO, like there's a gap from the 5 to 20. Like once you get to 25k, it drops off and then only reappears at greater than 10 million, which is interesting. Yeah. And it like jumps back up to number two, which I would, I'm not surprised by that. But I think there's probably some segmentation to be done there either way. It's agree. I think it's like, it's, it's like, I guess my big takeaway from this is that like, and this is actually again more of a compliment to like the work done here than it is like it's not a criticism, it's that these make sense to me. Like and yeah, and it is validating and it should be for anybody planning for next year within any of these buckets that these are areas worth investing in, like continuing to invest in. If you're questioning SEO and you're less than 5k ACV, unless you're a like brand new product in a space that like we talk to those types of product companies all the time and like there's not a ton of signal that you can find from like third party tools around like the opportunity for SEO. Totally get it. Like maybe that's not the first thing you want to do. But there's also validation that like it will grow. So like let's invest a little. But either way it just, it, it should give a marketing leaders confidence in some areas that they should prioritize.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: And that's why I think that is probably the biggest takeaway is I'm sure there's rationale for why only the top three were shown, but obviously all of those channels are somewhere on that list. Yeah. So to your point, less than a million of.
Of ARR.
Of course your top three are going to be warm, outbound and right. LinkedIn and founder brand.
Like that's a founder who's grinding. They're.
They're hitting up everyone. Their VCs are making connections for them. Like yeah, that makes it like does that mean they're not doing SEO? No, it just means it's not their top channels at the moment.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: And again like that's not to say that everyone is a fit. Like there's, there's a lot that we work through with prospects and trying to make sure this is the right time for you to invest. This is like, this is like a good place to invest your money and, and a good channel for you and all that. So yeah, a lot there. But I think certainly if you could see beyond just the top three, it would paint even more of a picture. So to your point, I'm not surprised by these at all.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: And I think we have one more or two more slides. Yes. Second to last one here. So this is what I was talking about earlier.
The impact of AI is next bag. So this was the level of impact from AI adoption.
22% saying no impact.
Sorry, 31% saying limited. 22% some 24 and then 24. Yeah, sorry, it's a little hard for me.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: I'm cheating. I have it on my pad.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Yes. And then I think oh, and then I deleted it from my notes because we put it on the next slide. So there was a lot of other nuance and kind of some quotes from people. But if we go to the last slide, what they kind of rolled up the insights there were. So it said those who are seeing a positive results cite three main areas of impact. One was outbound, one was market intelligence. And then the one I wanted to put here specifically they said content marketing, including generating SEO and AEO blog content, TTM documentation and personalized messaging. But then it says while content use cases are widely popular, many said they've been disappointed with ROI beyond basic time saving or time savings for basic uses, which I thought was again, spot on with what we've heard. Like, absolutely. For the last two years, we have seen an incredible rise in the amount of ways people are using AI for content creation. And you go back to whatever Jasper, copy AI like some of those tools. It's not a new thing.
And I think the adoption has ramped up significantly. However, I think that that reality is what we run into all the time, talking with teams and prospects that there's only so much they're really getting from it. And even now with far more advanced workflow and something like Air Ops compared to what you could do before with Jasper, still a lot of tinkering, a lot of human intervention, you still have to have the strategy. The broader.
It is making things more efficient and it is accelerating velocity, but it is not like set it and forget it, click the button. And so I think that that commentary really kind of pulls that through that. Yeah, we've seen it. But it's kind of just the. Some time saving for basic tasks and.
[00:53:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: And whatnot.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: I think it speaks a lot to and connects to kind of, or at least for me to connect the dots to a lot of the points made in the quotes. One alchemy from Ryan. I think that that's important.
[00:53:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: I think that is a reflection. That statement at the end is a reflection of like people just thinking that they can set up and forget it and that there isn't this like extra actual like strategic input that has to go into it when you use those tools.
Because if you do, I think there's this all or nothing mentality that everyone has about this that like, it's gotta be AI's gotta do it, it's gonna take it, it's gonna make it easier and then we're gonna be done and we can focus and we can scale and grow and that's not gonna be the case. Like, it's not gonna. But then that ties to, like, we have to accept that things aren't gonna be perfect. Like keep tweaking things.
So like, I think that that's one of the struggles is like there has to be a, like a more balanced approach to all these things and making sure that, you know, you're using tools intelligently, not just using them blindly partnering with people who know how to use those tools like us or.
Yeah. And just being more thoughtful about it. But I think that that's big. The alchemy piece is a big one because that's one of the things we're incorporating. And Ryan and our team is doing a lot more of is just making sure that there's really thought out workflows and process around how to create like really great content using AI. Whereas in as he would attest to and others we've worked with and clients who are doing the same thing, it's still hard.
It is not just a easy done thing.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Yep, agree.
Yeah. So great report. Highly recommend getting your hands on all 30 pages of that but also like I said we'll link to that takeaway post where you can get more of that context and then if you're one of the 51% investing more in AEO or 14% investing more in SEO next year certainly would be happy to chat with you and figure out how we could help augment your team and help you go faster with that. I think we'll wrap up. Best of luck with all of your 2026 planning and yeah, see you next time. Thank you.
