Omni Lab Consulting

Omni Lab is a demand gen agency for Series A to Series D B2B SaaS companies. We help you create, manage, and optimize paid advertising campaigns across most major ad channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, YouTube, Display, Reddit, TikTok, and more.

We focus on optimizing for leading and lagging indicators to ensure your paid efforts are driving qualified leads and opportunities that meet your ICP.

Co-Founder

Exit Five

Member

RevGenius

Jellyfish

Sr. Director of Sales & Partnerships

Stitch Labs

Regional Director of Sales

Teralytics

Head of Sales, East

XeoMatrix

Head of Sales & Marketing

MicroStrategy

Sr. Account Executive

Sr. Business Development Manager

Carahsoft Technology Corp.

Account Representative

Smashwizard

Founder, CEO

Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked for 4 VC backed SaaS companies, consulted with more than 100+, helped 1 get acquired, 1 reach unicorn status, and many more generate millions in net new revenue.

I've also seen a handful of those startups go out of business...including my own SaaS business so I know many of the mistakes. 

Over that time I've noticed that the buyer's journey has evolved. 

Today buyers have the power.

Yet, many SaaS businesses still continue to run the same programs that worked a decade ago. 

They continue to over-rely on lead gen and create friction in the buying process. 

This is pushing customer acquisition costs sky high and causing many to miss their targets. 

The way forward is to take a buyer-centric approach to creating and capturing demand. 

Buyer-centric demand gen is when your funnel aligns with how the buyer wants to learn about your company. 

It means you write in the language your buyer understands, you consider how they consume information, and when and how they want to buy. 

When you take a buyer-centric approach you generate more pipeline and revenue and an enduring brand. 

This is why we started Omni Lab.

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What we do for Series A to Series C SaaS startups:

→ Manage and optimize paid media across any digital channel
→ Distribute content/messaging via paid to grow pipeline and revenue
→ Build out engaging ad creative
→ Focus on optimizing the funnel based on pipeline and revenue. 

Results from SaaS companies we have worked with: 

→ Unicorn Status in 10 months
→ Grew pipeline 372% and lead > opp rate 266%
→ 1,300% increase in revenue Q3 > Q4
→ 20% increase in revenue Q over Q

If you are looking to create and capture demand via paid media, let's chat :) 

email: jonathan@omnilabconsulting.com or DM me

Jonathan Bland

If I were a VP of Marketing/Founder/CEO, and I were trying to get my first 100 users. I wouldn't use paid ads. 

I'd first focus on doing the following (in this order)

1.) Email/call/reach out to everyone you already know that could be a fit
2.) Email/call/reach out to everyone you know that might know your ICP
3.) Email/call/reach out to people that could be a fit that you don't know
4.) Post/engage thoughtfully on social media

Ideally, these all happen before you even build the production app, so you can validate that there is a problem and that demand already exists. (we know that doesn't happen sometimes...)
 
In this time, you'll learn:

- The messaging that resonates best
- The top use cases/problems for your product
- The positioning that worked best
- The specific segments that convert better
- And so on

Which will then derisk your investment in paid media and ultimately your product roadmap. 

It doesn't mean everything will be "figured out", but many of the fundamentals will be in place to allow channels to have a better ROI.

LinkedIn

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Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | Paid Media for B2B SaaS brands (HIRING)

"You can have the best product in the world. But if no one knows about it, you have NOTHING."

Arnold wasn’t wrong.

In categories where every product starts to look the same, mental availability becomes the real advantage.

If you’re not top of mind when they’re ready to buy, you’re invisible.

I'm a bit worried about you. 

We just launched the campaign, and you want to know how it's performing?

It looks like we are forecasted to close out 2025 at a 34% YoY growth rate. 

And I couldn't be happier with what the entire Omni Team has accomplished; this can't be achieved without all of you!

And most importantly, to all the SaaS brands that trusted us with their paid media strategy. 

And to the many more that helped provide feedback and advice along the way, especially my Pops ;) 

We are by no means perfect, but with every mistake we have made along the way, we have done our best to take in that feedback to get better. 

I can tell you with complete conviction that we will continue to push ourselves harder to do everything in our control to put any brand we work with in the best position to increase brand awareness and drive pipeline through paid media. 

And with that growth, we are starting up conversations in search of the following roles:

- Sr. Paid Search Manager
- Sr. Paid Social Manager
- Sr. Demand Gen Manager (paid focus)

If you are in the U.S. and have strong in-house experience at a SaaS brand or support SaaS brands at an agency, I'd love to chat. 

Even if you aren't quite ready to move, I'd like to meet, as it could be a fit down the road. :)

We look for people who are:

- Curious, like to go deep
- Focus on pipeline accountability
- Deeply technical with paid media
- Deep experience working with CRMs 
- Good at communicating and setting expectations
- Stay up to date with the latest things happening in SaaS

Drop me a DM and we'll find some time over the next couple of weeks to chat. 

Once again, thanks to all who have supported and trusted us. 🙏 🙏 🙏

People forget that buyers buy on their timeline. 

Not on yours. 

Just the other day, a vendor gave me a deadline to close a contract. 

They said, "We can offer the discount until the end of the month."

My first reaction was feeling pressure to sign the deal. (what they want)

Then I just felt like I was being rushed to buy something. 

It made me want to abandon the whole deal. 

This isn't the type of environment you want to create for buyers. 

During the sales process or before. 

However, we often spend so much energy trying to convert people who aren’t even close to making a decision yet.

Instead, we need to find ways to "eat up" more mental real estate so we are the first brand that pops into their minds. 

We can do that by: 

- Building deep relationships with them
- Helping them with something
- Being clear with what we do
- Creating memorable moments
- Sharing something they value

Stop trying to force the sale, be a helpful guide, and stay top of mind so when they are ready, they choose you on their timeline.

Coming from a sales background, I used to think marketing’s job was simple: deliver more inbound leads so I could hit quota with fewer cold calls. 

Over time, I realized most of the real impact marketing generates isn’t visible in the short term and doesn’t look like a “lead.”

Yet, marketing is under more pressure than ever to deliver "leads". 

A recent survey by MarketingWeek found that 37.7% are under pressure to deliver leads, regardless of quality (unacceptable in my book). 

And 52% claim senior leadership fails to understand the importance of marketing beyond lead generation. (yep, we all know this and feel this)

Marketing can be a short-term lead generator and needs to connect back to business outcomes; however, you'd be incredibly short-sighted if you think that's all marketing "does". 

Marketing is:

- Positioning the product so sales can increase win rates
- Building mental availability so cold outbound reply rates increase
- Building content engines that engage and build trust with buyers before they are in-market
- Making the website clear so buyers understand what the hell you do
- Feeding marketing insights to the product team to guide the product roadmap
- And more

Many of those things don't show up as “leads" in the CRM, yet they make selling dramatically easier in the long term.

So from the sales perspective, it’s easy to conclude that if marketing isn't driving leads, it isn't doing anything because the impact isn’t always immediate or visible.

And from marketing’s perspective, it’s exhausting to constantly defend long-term work to short-term pressures.

The reality?

1.) Marketing needs to help the whole org understand what it's doing to drive both short and long-term goals. 

2.) And ensure proper expectations are set, as everything marketing does can't be measured with the same brush. 

3.) In addition, focus on reframing the way you talk about other initiatives that aren't directly related to promotion. 

Instead of saying “we are redoing messaging and positioning this quarter to better position the company in the category.”

You say, “We are reworking how we position ourselves in the category to help buyers better understand why we are a better choice against alternative solutions, which will help improve lead-to-opportunity conversion rates."

Like everything, it's about balance, setting the proper expectations, and helping educate senior leadership on how to measure different initiatives.

Easier said than done.

Google Ads don't work. 
LinkedIn Ads don't work. 
👉 Before you blame the channel, consider this. 
 
CLICK
- Does the search term align with the ad?
- Are you bidding on the right keywords?
- Do those keywords align with those that convert to pipeline?
- Are you targeting your ICP or your TAM?
 
WEBSITE
- Does the ad align with the landing page?
- Is it easy to understand how it works, who it's for, how much it costs, and the outcome it drives? 
- Do you have relevant social proof?
 
CONVERSION
- Is the form simple and short?
- Does it offer an easy way to schedule a meeting?
- Are there clear CTAs across the website?
- Do you address common objections on the demo page?
 
LEAD HAND-OFF
- How long does it take to set up a meeting with a buyer after the form is filled take?
- Did we align the follow-up with the intent level?
- Do we offer a demo at the first meeting?
- Do we identify the core problems of the buyer and how our solution can help solve those issues?
 
SALES CYCLE 
- Did we create a close plan?
- Have we gotten all key decision-makers involved?
- Do we add value along the sales process?
- Do we always set up the next meeting with a clear agenda?
- Have we properly differentiated ourselves against competitors and keeping with the status quo? 
 
80% of the above don't directly involve the "channel". 
 
Asking all these questions takes time; it isn't easy and isn't nearly as fun as just throwing in the towel on a channel. 
 
HOWEVER, if your ICP is searching for your solution or is active on a channel, then it's likely it's a good channel for you to be on. 
 
The other day, I was talking with a Head of Growth at a Series B B2B SaaS brand, and they said, "Many of the leads coming from Google Ads aren't converting to revenue." 
 
I waited....
 
Then he said.

"After listening to sales calls and reviewing our process, we realized that we need to work on our sales process. We have leads not being followed up with, poor identification of problems on calls."
 
90% of post-click activities have a huge impact on ROI in your paid channels. 

TL;DR: Before you blame the channel, do the research to see if there are other reasons leads aren't converting to opportunities.

How would you feel if you told your CEO that you saved the company $100k?

And that you reallocated that budget to better-performing campaigns, which should drive an estimated x number of high-intent conversions. 

I can't think of any VP of Marketing who wouldn't want to share that story. 

And this is exactly the story for this SaaS brand that's raised more than $100M.

Over the past 3 months, they have spent $99,849k on keywords with zero conversions. 

Here’s how to see if you have the same opportunity:

1.) Export or build a report in Google Ads and pull metrics/attributes that include: keywords, clicks, impressions, CPC, cost, conversions, conversion rate, and search impression share. 

2.) Take the average cost per conversion for a similar campaign (e.g., non-brand)

3.) Apply a filter to your report to be set at 1.5-2x (or an amount you are comfortable with) the average cost per conversion

4.) Apply a filter to the conversion column to look for keywords that have spent 1.5-2x your average cost per conversion with zero conversions. 

That’s it. Or you can automate this with rules; albeit, I still think some human oversight is important. 

Generally, I’d start with reviewing the brands CRM or offline conversions; however, if conversion tracking is set up correctly, that should be sufficient to guide you on what to cut keywords that have produced zero conversions. 

Many of these keywords for this SaaS brand generally aligned with the brand; however, 20 other keywords in the account aren't close to being maxed out. 

So while you could argue you should review:

- search terms report
- match types
- ad copy
- landing page,
- Etc.  

...You already have clear proof that these other 20 keywords are driving high-intent conversions right now. 

You can always come back to keywords that have been cut to work on all those things I mentioned, but if you are looking for something that can help improve performance in the short-term, that is where you should start.

Why is it getting more expensive to acquire customers?

There is no question that 2025 has been the year of "how do we get more efficient with our marketing spend".

The Emerging Cloud Index shows public software companies down 6.3% YTD. 

Pavilion did a survey back in May of 2025 showing the new CAC Ratio for new customers continues to rise, 14% higher in 2024.

And many CMOs I talk to still don't have enough pipeline coverage.

Meanwhile, every channel is dead or dying (according to {insert name} thought leader).

The reality is that it's much more complex than asking "what's the best channel or tactic?"

Your product, positioning, brand, pricing, and sales motion all impact CAC. 

You can have the BEST marketing in the world with the best content, but if your product isn't solving a big problem at an affordable cost, then it doesn't matter how many ads you run. 

There are, however, ALWAYS things in your control as a marketer that can help improve efficiency, and those are the variables you need to focus on. 

Take a look at the deck below from a recent Factors.ai webinar I hosted with ✌🏻Jason S., to hear four practical things you can do. 

TL;DR Focus first on what you can control, then use other macro-level data points to support the narrative of what's going on in the market.

Pavilion

↳ Co-Founder @ Omni Lab | B2B Paid Media | AI Architect

How to Decrease CAC

At Omni Lab, we've seen a 667.34% increase in traffic from ChatGPT YoY. 

And just the other day,  Lee Gannon from Cognism sent me this Slack below. 

More and more people who come to us inbound are mentioning LLMs as one of the ways they found us; ChatGPT is the first, followed by Perplexity, and then Google AI. 

It's somewhat clear that these could be some of the reasons we are being recommended:

- We are listed in some top 10 demand gen/paid media agency comparison lists
- We have been producing organic content on LinkedIn for years
- We've done content collaborations (e.g. guest podcast, webinars, events)
- We've implemented a number of technical changes on our website to optimize for LLMs
- We've added a structured list-based page dedicated just for LLMs to read called "Hey AI Read this"
- We're also being recommended in some "agency recommendation" threads on Reddit

While all this is generally good, I have noticed that some brands are:

- Often a bit smaller, less qualified
- The calls are often colder; less familiar with us

Regardless, it's clearly a good thing to see more activity with LLMs trending up, and I'd expect not just us but other categories to see the same thing. 

I'm also sure some people will ask an LLM for recommendations, then simply go to your website directly, which creates holes in this analysis.

"SQLs are up 57%" 

"No, I actually see that we are only up by 37%"

I've seen these conversations play out so many times internally between teams. 

And sometimes between us with the brands we support. 

When you aren't aligned or you have reporting discrepancies it makes impossible to understand what's working and what's not. 

So often, reports aren't using the same date property, the same filters, or the same attribution model, which creates frustrating moments when two teams report completely different results. 

Or worse, they aren't agreed on, or they change often, which then destroys historical funnel conversion rates. 

To avoid this, sales, marketing, product, and the exec team must agree on:

- Lead stage names and definitions
- How performance will be measured and with what KPIs
- Determine CRM properties  and filters for key reports
- The exit criteria used to move someone from one stage to the next

This is your internal data dictionary that everyone in the company can review to ensure reporting stays aligned. 

You then need to agree on the ONE attribution model you'll use for determining "source". 

Why one?

Because it adds way more complexity when you change models, and it's difficult to communicate results across multiple models. 

You can and should use different models to support a narrative you are trying to communicate and/or answer different questions, but the core reporting needs to be aligned on ONE. 

As you build up reporting consistency, it'll get a lot easier to do "accurate" funnel analysis and understand the impact of experiments you are running. 

Without this, you'll be stuck in endless arguments trying to benchmark results on data that isn't consistent.

If your friend just bought a new Ferrari, would you buy one?

Probably not. 

Then why are you so concerned with what keywords your competitors are bidding on. 

You have to fight the social conformity.

Just because they decided to spend a bunch of money (or go into debt) doesn’t mean it’s the right financial decision for you.

The same thing is true for doing competitor keyword research. 

If Monday.com can help with workflow automation and is the number one recommended by Google in its Workflow Automation tools recommendation list...

Should they bid on "workflow automation" just because similar products to theirs are bidding on it?

Not necessarily. 

Here’s why:

1.) You’re copying an unknowable strategy

You have no clue whether their campaigns are profitable, whether they’re targeting the same ICP, or whether their agency is just dumping budget to show activity.

2.) You inherit their mistakes

Just because they can bid on something doesn’t mean you should. Most companies run mediocre PPC programs with bad tracking and outdated keyword lists.

3.) You become reactive instead of buyer-focused

The moment you optimize based on what competitors do, you stop optimizing for what your customer actually searches for.

Sure, use tools like Spyfu, Ahrefs, and others to see what keywords they are bidding on for research, but don't chase competitors. 

Chase your customers.

Why are the first 10 minutes of webinars wasted talking about "housekeeping items”? 

Why not instead jump straight into the content? 

If I listen to a recorded webinar, I’ll always skip ahead as the first 5-10min is usually just pre-webinar banter, intros talking about people's background, the agenda, and other "house keeping items". 

I've never been on a live webinar that does this.  

What if you skipped all of that and started with a compelling question to get people thinking? 

Or what if you simply dove right in to the content? 

That’d hook them in early.

Maybe something like this: 

1.) Open with a compelling hook (big insight, misconception, or story)
2.) Deliver the #1 takeaway immediately (buy trust in the first 60–90 seconds)
3.) Move straight into the content
4.) Keep intros to ~15 seconds
5.) Skip the housekeeping entirely (or put it in the chat)

Worth a thought.

Garnter found that buyers spend only 17% of their total buying time with sales.

The other 80–95% happens in channels marketing owns or influences, search, social, peers, review sites, your website, and product.

Surveys from Gartner, McKinsey, and 6sense all tell the same story:

– 60%+ of buyers would prefer a rep-free experience.
– 80% of sales interactions now happen through digital channels.
– In 4 out of 5 deals, the buyer has a preferred vendor in mind before they ever talk to a rep.  ￼

If marketing now influences roughly 80% of the buying journey, then marketing should receive a greater share of investment.

Sales isn’t going away, but its role continues to shift later in the process. By the time a buyer submits a “demo request,” they’ve nearly made their decision.

That puts a huge responsibility on marketing:

Be the brand they think of before they’re ready to buy.

Invest accordingly.

Mark Huber

UserEvidence

I was hired as the first full-time marketer to build out the marketing function from scratch.

UserEvidence is the customer evidence platform for GTM teams. 

UserEvidence makes it easy to collect customer feedback throughout the customer lifecycle, curate the best proof points, and share it with your GTM team to use.

B2B marketers at Gong, Ramp, and Splunk use UserEvidence to prove the value of their product and win in crowded markets.

VP of Marketing

RevenueHero

I’m working with RevenueHero as a marketing advisor and helping their team with all things marketing.

I’ve been a RevenueHero customer for over a year now, so I know how well their product solves one of the biggest nightmares for B2B marketing leaders: making sure the right prospects can quickly schedule time with the right sales reps to keep pipeline from slipping through the cracks.

Marketing Advisor

Paramark.com

B2B marketing leaders use Paramark to get more confident about how to spend their marketing dollars.

Paramark predicts and measures the impact of every marketing investment — paid and owned, brand and performance, online and offline.

Their machine-learning based approach uncovers the true incrementality of marketing to show you what really works.

Navattic

Navattic's demo creation software helps teams instantly create interactive demos that convert.

MARKeting

Marketing advisory for early-stage B2B software startups.

I work with founders and in-house marketing teams to cut through the noise and build marketing that actually works. That usually looks like:
- Positioning that makes your value obvious to buyers
- Messaging that doesn’t sound like every other vendor
- GTM strategy that aligns with how people actually buy
- Early team and process design so Marketing isn’t always playing catch-up
- Coaching founders or first marketing hires so they move fast—and move right

Website: markhuber.co
Email: hello@markhuber.co

Founder

Gated

Gated builds technology to help humans stay focused in a noisy digital world. Take back control of your attention and create your Gated profile at www.gated.com.

metadata.io

I did some serious damage in my time at Metadata as the second full-time marketer.

After my first year, I created a new role to build the Metadata brand through product marketing, content, community, and events.

We created the Demand Gen U podcast with 50+ episodes, and 30,000+ downloads in 15 months, plus the annual DEMAND event with 11,000+ demand gen marketers registered in two years.

We launched the DEMAND Community for 1,600+ demand gen marketers to connect, learn, and level up their careers.

And we grew ARR from $2.5M to $15M with over 75% being Marketing-sourced.

Head of Brand & Product Marketing

I was hired as the "Director of Growth" aka second full-time marketer. I intentionally use air quotes because that title means a million different things to B2B marketers.

I did a little bit of everything. I overhauled the entire Metadata brand (positioning, messaging, and design), built our content engine, and re-launched our website along the way.

We hit our Marketing-sourced pipeline target in five consecutive quarters, created serious momentum, and never looked back.

Director of Growth

Fast Radius, Inc.

I was hired as the first Director of Demand Generation and reported to the CMO.

This was my first time owning a number. We hit our pipeline and revenue targets for the three quarters I worked there. My time here was shorter than originally planned, but for good reason.

I bought Metadata as a first-time customer in January 2020, and quickly realized it was a game-changer so I left to join Metadata full-time.

Director, Demand Generation

Uptake

This was the first time in my career I reported into a CMO, learning a whole lot (aka messing up even more) along the way too.

Senior Manager, Marketing Operations

I was hired as the first Marketing Ops Manager and built out everything from scratch. Hubspot first, then Marketo, and everything we needed in Salesforce.

Working in Marketing Ops was the best thing to happen to my career. I learned about every single Marketing function.

I had to try and "prove" the ROI of everything we did. The good tactics and mostly, the bad ones.

At the time, Uptake was the fastest US startup to reach a $2B valuation.

Manager, Marketing Operations

Symbiont Group - B2B Marketing + Sales

From Accenture to first full-time hire and founding member at a bootstrapped startup.

I got promoted from being an IC to a People Manager too soon. I managed a Content Strategist and an Art Director - making a ton of mistakes along the way. This is where I fell in love with B2B marketing.

Digital Marketing Manager

Bringing Advocates, Evidence, and References into one platform for B2B marketing teams

This isn't your typical LinkedIn bio because I’m not here to talk about myself in the third person.

You might wonder, “Why has this guy worked in so many different marketing roles? Can’t he make up his mind?”

I’ve always wanted to work in marketing, and somehow, I fell for B2B marketing (said no one ever).

Over the last 13 years, I’ve worked in many different marketing roles at bootstrapped and venture-backed B2B startups. It’s all been intentional too. I wanted to see firsthand what actually works.

I’ve seen a lot, learned a lot, and made my fair share of mistakes.

If you want help from someone who has actually done the work before, check out markhuber.co.

B2B marketers use Metadata’s Marketing OS to drive more revenue without all the manual and repetitive work.

From running paid campaigns to personalizing web experiences to optimizing everything to revenue – Metadata automates all of this.

This means less time spent on low-value tasks and more time spent on strategy, creativity, and driving revenue.

Every new marketing leader wants to put a win on the board early. This is the fastest one I know.

When I started at UserEvidence, the first big thing I had to fix was our inbound demo flow because routing was a straight-up hot mess.

Meetings kept getting assigned to the wrong rep, prospects got a brutal experience, and our HubSpot setup made reporting on meetings feel like a root canal with no numbing (I'm a baby at the dentist).

As inbound demo volume went up, so did the noise. More misroutes, more delays, and more Slacks from pissed off reps asking why someone else got the meeting that should’ve been in their name.

I knew I needed a tool to fix this. It was the first one I’d be putting my name on, so the stakes felt higher. Nobody wants their first purchase to blow up in their face. I needed this to work and wanted Sales to feel like Marketing was making their lives easier, not harder.

Rolling out RevenueHero gave us exactly what we needed at first, then a whole lot more:
- a reliable way to qualify, route, and schedule inbound demos
- enrichment that filled in the blanks for us so prospects didn’t have to
- routing logs that end the “why did this go to that rep?” detective work for good

RevenueHero is the move if you’re stepping into a new role and want a big win fast. Because when a buyer raises their hand, you either make it easy for them or you don’t. 

Fix that first and thank me later.

VP Marketing @ UserEvidence | Advisor to Early-Stage B2B Startups

One of the wildest parts of becoming a first-time marketing leader is realizing how much of the job you were never trained for.

Fiscal planning hits the top of that list. You only learn it by doing it wrong a few times. Earlier this week, I said I’d share my mistakes and what we’re changing this year, and it ended up being WAY too much for one post.

So today is the mistakes since people love mistakes (and I don't want you to make the same mistakes). These are the top three lessons I learned the hard way so you don’t have to.

Mistake 1: Only building a top-down model

When I first started at UserEvidence, it was just me and the founders doing fiscal planning. Limited historical data. A ton of assumptions. Even more uncertainty.

I was so focused on making the top-down math work that I completely skipped the bottoms-up view. I’d built bottoms-up models before, but as a team of one trying to “get it right,” I ignored the part that actually grounds the numbers in reality.

When we finally compared the two, the gap was MASSIVE. I almost wanted to puke when I saw the difference between the two plans.

The learning: top-down tells you where you want to go. Bottom-up tells you whether you can actually get there. You need both before anything becomes believable.

Mistake 2: Not bringing the right people into the process early enough

I worked with an Ops freelancer that first year throughout this process. Everything looked clean and logical to me. Then I did the “grand unveiling” with our co-founders… and it blew up in my face.

They didn’t agree with how the model was structured. They didn’t buy the assumptions. They questioned the data and how we were calculating it.

It was one of the least enjoyable meetings of my career because it made perfect sense in my head... and none of it landed.

The learning: fiscal planning is a team sport. Get leaders involved early when the model and assumptions are still being shaped, not at the final reveal when everything gets torn apart. Big unveilings never go well. Bring people along with you.

Mistake #3 - Presenting an annual Marketing budget line by line

I spent weeks building a detailed budget by category, quarter, and month.
And then I made the worst rookie error: I presented the entire spreadsheet, line by line.

That opened the door for non-marketers to debate every tool, experiment, and cost whether they understood it or not.

It derailed the entire conversation and created so much unnecessary noise. Talk about having my tail between my legs.

The learning: roll the budget up to categories and benchmark those allocations against similar-stage companies. Present investments at the category level. For us, that’s brand, demand, events, experiments, tools & technology, and headcount. The line-by-line budget is something Marketing owns internally.

Next post, I’ll break down what we're doing differently this year and why the whole process works better with Sales, CS, and Ops in it from the start.

Most of the real work in leadership happens in moments nobody sees.

Not in dashboards. Not in big meetings. Not in the list of things the team shipped. It’s everything underneath that actually keeps the team moving.

It’s the Slack thread you jump into because you can tell the context is starting to drift. It’s noticing a shift in someone’s tone on a Zoom call and setting up a quick 1:1 before it turns into something heavier. And it’s catching when everyone is moving fast but not from the same place, and resetting things so we don’t create extra work we never needed.

None of this shows up anywhere. It just shows up in how fast or slow the team moves afterward.

Earlier in my career, I didn’t pay attention to any of this. I focused on output and speed and proving I could carry more. But the longer I lead, the more obvious it becomes that the environment around the work has just as much impact as the work itself.

When people feel focused, supported, and confident in what comes next, the whole team moves with a different kind of momentum. When those things slip, everything takes twice as long and feels three times as heavy.

That’s the part of leadership you don’t notice at first, but it’s what ends up making everything else work.

Highline was the biggest swing we’ve taken as a marketing team. We built it from scratch and it had to stand on its own without selling anything.

It wasn’t "just an event" for us either. It was a massive content capture moment, and Jillian Hoefer was the brain behind the whole thing. She came up with a crazy docu-series idea (The Highline Bet) that turned our 2.5 day event into something we could actually show people, not just talk about.

Episode 1: The quiet moments before everything kicked off

I walked the venue by myself that morning before anyone arrived. Empty teepees. Cold air. Tetons in the background. Six months of planning compressed into one quiet moment. Everything from the merch issues to the “who’s actually showing up” stress was still sitting on my shoulders. Then people started rolling in, most seeing Jackson for the first time, and the whole vibe shifted. 

Episode 2: The messiest day of the whole week

I was up at 5:15 fixing slides, then jumped straight into a sunrise wildlife tour because we needed at least one person from UserEvidence on each activity. We saw moose, elk, and a mama bear with three cubs (which our guide told us was not normal). In the middle of the horseback ride, my phone buzzed with a call saying the shuttle company refused to come back for our group. So 20+ people ended up riding back in pickup trucks with hay bales in the back. Completely unplanned, completely chaotic, and somehow the part of Highline that people talked about the most.

Episode 3: The stakes, the scramble, the payoff

We hauled rented furniture into gondolas before sunrise, dealt with benches that were still soaked from power washing, and found out the bathrooms hadn’t been cleaned after a concert the night before. Our main Highline sign never arrived, so the furniture company built a new one by hand overnight. The opening keynote landed, the entire room was locked in, and two inbound demos came through in the first 35 minutes from people sitting in the crowd.

The EventShark 🦈 crew and Algert⚡️ team took Jillian’s idea and turned it into something with production quality that has no business coming from a marketing team our size. The feedback so far has been unreal too.

Head over to our YouTube channel to watch the full three-part series.

Highline was the biggest bet of my career, and tomorrow I’m breaking down exactly how we pulled it off.

Pranav Piyush asked me to come on Paramark's Office Hours and share how we got founder buy-in, how we ran it, and what actually made it work… not the pretty Instagram highlight-reel recap.

We’ll get into:
- Where the idea actually came from and how I got the founders on board for something this big (and expensive)
- How we approached every single detail with intention instead of doing what everyone else does
- Why flipping the agenda was the move that changed the entire experience
- What worked, what almost broke, and what we’re doing differently next year
- The business impact 90 days out with receipts that prove the bet was worth it

If you want the unfiltered version that never makes it into LinkedIn posts, see you tomorrow.

Fiscal planning is a huge part of the job nobody prepares you for as a first-time marketing leader.

It forces you to figure out how you’re going to hit the number next year with limited data and big assumptions. What it takes. What it costs. What you can actually support with the team and budget you have.

This is my third time leading our fiscal planning process. My only goal is to get a little better at it every year. I don’t think it’ll ever be something I look forward to. Maybe that’s just me?

Later this week, I’ll share the biggest mistakes I made in my first two years and what we’re changing this time around.

If you learned a painful fiscal planning lesson that will save another marketing leader from the stuff you wish someone warned you about, drop it in the comments.

I’ve been on customer advisory boards. I’ve run customer advisory boards. And the first time I ran one, I had no clue what I was doing.

The reality is most CABs end up being one-sided. 

They’re rarely run with intention, so they usually turn into an afterthought. Something you know you should be doing, but you’re never totally sure how to get right.

And when they miss, everyone feels it. Attendance is light, the meetings are awkwardly quiet until one brave soul speaks up, and suddenly you’re pulling teeth just to get people to talk. 

On Tuesday 12/9, we’re hosting a webinar with Boardstream on How to Build a Customer Advisory Board That Drives Retention, Expansion, and Advocacy.

Evan Kraut and Marina Ilishaev live and breathe this stuff at a level most teams never get to see. They’ll be schooling me for an hour on things like:
- Making sure the CAB actually has a point and isn’t just another meeting on the calendar
- Picking people who will shoot you straight instead of telling you what they think you want to hear
- Running the conversation in a way that gets past polite feedback and into the stuff that actually helps
- Taking what you hear and turning it into real decisions, not another “we’ll get back to you” moment

And honestly… I’m showing up to learn too. We have a CAB at UserEvidence today and we know it can be better.

If you’re trying to build a CAB the right way or get more from the one you already have, join us. It’ll be a good one.

PS we’re already 60%+ to our usual webinar reg goal after sending one email yesterday (on the Monday of a holiday week). So yeah… clearly this topic is on people’s minds heading into 2026

The hardest part of choosing an advocacy platform is knowing what you’ll regret six months from now.

I’ve seen it more times than I can count. The vendor promises the world, everyone feels good about the decision, and then CMA teams spend the next year working around the tool instead of with it.

Tomorrow we’re breaking this down in How to Evaluate Customer Advocacy Platforms Without Getting Burned with Evan Huck and Kevin Lau.

We’ll walk you through the framework we built so this doesn’t happen to you. And we’re giving it away at the end along with the RFP template and scorecard we created for teams evaluating platforms for next year.

We’ll hit:

- The signals that show whether a platform will scale
- The RFP questions that expose what a demo won’t
- The stuff vendors won’t say out loud

This 45-minute webinar will save you from spending next year fixing problems you never should’ve had in the first place.

Live tomorrow at 1 PM ET. Sign up to get the framework and RFP template first.

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Jonathan Bland

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The Battle

Jonathan Bland

Mark Huber

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jonathan Bland's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreJonathan Bland's LinkedIn Performance