Matt Lerner

SYSTM

At SYSTM (formerly Startup Core Strengths), our mission is to help early-stage startups find their big growth levers (and pull them). We've noticed that great startups don't waste time on small stuff, so we  focus everyone on the most impactful work.

Founder & CEO

TransferGo

During my part-time interim role, our team more than doubled the YoY growth rate of acquisitions while lowering CPAs and improving retention and revenue per transaction. I also sourced their full-time VP Growth, and hired 4 other diverse and talented marketers to the team.

Interim VP of Growth

500 Startups

I led 500 Startups operations in London, investing in 35 seed-stage companies including Storemaven, SimplyCook, ZenJob, AirSorted, Popsa, Settled, Lexoo, Thriva, CharlieHR, HonestBrew, Fy and Second Nature. I also set up and ran the "Distro Dojo" growth marketing program for our portfolio companies in London and Berlin, which I was able to staff with a handful of the most extraordinary growth marketers in Europe.

Partner, London

PayPal

I led business-to-business marketing for PayPal UK, and oversaw the SMB/SME merchant business as a general manager.

Director, SMB

Created and lead PayPal’s first website marketing team, including conversion specialists, web analysts, developers, designers and writers. With a $3.5M budget, I oversee all business-facing areas of PayPal.com, driving over 85% of PayPal’s small business acquisition. The team boosted conversion (visitors to signups) in 2011 by 28%, generating an extra $67M over three years.

Director, On-Site Marketing

Built and managed a team of direct marketers who oversaw all marketing to PayPal’s existing small business customer base including activation, cross-sell and retention, generating $30M in incremental revenue.
+ Led pricing in North America.
+ Oversaw all marketing for the PayPal Debit Card, a $60M business, accelerating growth from 7% to 20% YoY in 12 months.
+ Deployed a propensity model targeting our most promising new customers with a high-touch “welcome” experience, boosting their value by 34% vs. control. The program generated an extra $11M in revenue in the first year and $55M over three years.

Group Manager, Merchant Engagement Marketing

Promoted within the same role, grew the team to 18. Developed processes & metrics around go-to-market. Oversaw the launch of many of PayPal’s most popular small business products.

Group Manager, Product Marketing

Built PayPal’s first outbound Product Marketing team. We oversaw all outbound B2B product marketing, launched a dozen major products and features.

Sr. Manager, Product Marketing

+ Originally hired to oversee developer marketing
+ Managed partner marketing through our shopping cart partners including GoDaddy and Yahoo!
+ Ran PayPal’s first consumer engagement campaigns
+ Launched Website Payments Pro, which currently generates over $100M revenue/year.

Marketing Manager

Macromedia

Brought Fireworks MX 2004 to market. The launch exceeded sales forecast by 20%. Planned subsequent release including researching and writing the MRD.

Product Manager

Visited 36 countries, wrote a book, climbed two 18,000 ft. Himalayan peaks, dove some of the world's best reefs, and learned to "think globally."

International Traveller

+ Led the successful development and launch of two products and discontinued a third product without alienating valuable customers.
+ Led demand generation among designers and developers for four of Macromedia’s largest launches including the flagship Dreamweaver product. Sales consistently beat forecasts. Tactics included print advertising, online media, direct mail (Harte Hanks) and email (Digital Impact) campaigns.

Product & Marketing Manager

Elemental Software

Poppe Tyson

Led B2B online marketing programs for clients including Novell Inc., Edward Jones Inc. and IDG.

Assistant Account Executive

Startup growth strategist, Ex PayPal, 500 Startups VC, Founder @ SYSTM

I founded SYSTM to help startups find their big growth levers - the small actions that can have the biggest impact on their growth. We’ve worked with over 200 companies and earned a 96% founder “likely to recommend” score.

Before founding SYSTM, I was the London-based Partner of 500 Startups, an early-stage VC fund, where I built and ran an accelerator seed-stage growth program for our portfolio companies.

Prior to joining 500 Startups, I worked for many years building and managing growth teams for three  startups (two disasters, one exit), and later at PayPal. 

I approach my work first as a general manager and then as a marketer, product manager or both, as needed. My lens is quantitative, but rooted in deep customer insights and testing, and based on fast iteration. I’m always learning, and I really enjoy teaching and helping those around me to learn and improve. Skip to the references below, you'll see that I'm regarded as a thought leader in many areas of business, and an inspiring people manager who reliably delivers ahead of expectations.

Andrei Zinkevich

Fullfunnel.io

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

Co-founder

Trenches - B2B marketing community

Trenches — a community created by B2B marketers for B2B marketers who are in the trenches every day getting their hands dirty in growing B2B companies with high ACV and long sales cycles. 

We talk about ABM (account-based marketing), marketing-sourced pipeline, demand generation, lead nurturing, GTM strategy, buyer’s journey, and all other hot topics that are ignored in the sales communities. 

Community is FOREVER FREE.

Founder

Split Tech City

Split Tech City is a community for tech companies that operate, live, plan to launch a business or simply love the Mediterranean seaside. 

Whether you want to find a local tech partner, access the tech talent pool, relocate to Split, or find a job in the tech space, Split Tech City is for you. 

Learn more and sign up for upcoming events here: https://en.split-techcity.com

Strategic Advisor

Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Podcast

The System B2B Marketing Show is a weekly podcast hosted by Andrei Zinkevich. 

Every week with B2B marketing professionals we dive deeply into topics as a B2B marketing strategy, full-funnel marketing, inbound lead generation, lead nurturing, sales and marketing alignment, sales and marketing automation, content marketing and account-based marketing (ABM). 

Our goal is to help B2B marketers, founders, CMO, and head of growth teams implement system B2B marketing and increase their sales pipeline, scale revenue, and customer growth.

Visit our podcast page: https://getleado.com/the-system-b2b-marketing-show/ and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes (for iOS users) or on Stitcher (for Android).

Host

ROIplan

ROIPlan's mission is to empower B2B marketing teams and help them to create revenue-driven marketing plans. 

I started my career as a sales rep and, after five years in sales, switched to marketing. Another eight years, I worked as a CMO and B2B marketing consultant with 50+ B2B Companies from Europe and North America.

Every company I joined, I saw the same problem: 

Stakeholders and B2B sales teams didn't believe marketing and didn't believe in marketing. They didn't see the marketing impact on revenue.

One of the biggest problems is that marketers don't know how to present a marketing plan for executives and sales teams. Board members don't see a direct positive impact on revenue and decline plan and budget.

Besides this, there are lots of challenges that marketers face when working on marketing plans:

- Find history and the reports of the experiments in the past
- Allocate marketing budget in the most efficient way
- Prepare executive reports that show the ROI of the campaigns
- Orchestrate and align marketing campaigns with the sales team
- Prioritize experiments and focus on those that might generate the highest possible ROI
- Align non-lead generation campaigns with business goals and evaluate success criteria
- Managing lots of Google Sheets and project management tools to plan, present and execute a marketing plan

All this led to the idea of creating a marketing planning software that will simplify marketers preparing revenue-driving plans and get executive approval.

-> Create revenue-driving marketing plans and get executive approval in ROIplan:
-> Identify the top priority campaigns and experiments
-> Allocate your marketing budget most efficiently by channels and experiments
-> See what experiments generated the highest ROI in the past and what performed poorly
-> Get your campaigns and budget approved by the supervisor or your client 

Try ROIplan for free by clicking the image below.

Co-Founder

B2B Marketers & Founders

Are you skilled B2B marketer or Founder? Do you agree with 2 principles

1) Quality over quantity
2) Strategy and process before tactics and growth hacks?

If you've answered "Yes" to all 2 questions, you’ve got into the right place. 

WHOM YOU'LL GET ACQUAINTED WITH?

You'll get acquainted with other awesome and skilled B2B Marketers & Founders from the whole world who love to learn, share and grow. 

Amongst them Sujan Patel, Ben lee, Gilles De Clerck, Stapho Thienpont, Guillaume Moubeche, Juraj Zamborsky, and many others.

There are no "internet marketing" and "funnel gurus" who teach you about "money making machine" or "get rich quick" schemes. Only real business.

Ad.Wize

I help middle&enterprise businesses to launch my flagship consulting methodology called "Integrated marketing system". This system consists of 7 phases, creates steady streams of target leads and helps to retain existing customers. 

As well I help FMCG manufacturers with distribution development, entering new markets and increasing sales.

My background:

+ 11 years in marketing&sales 
+ Working with customers from 13 countries
+ My consulting methodology is working in 19 different markets
+ I've worked and helped with distribution development 12 FMCG manufacturers from whole Europe 

My Specialities:

• Integrated Marketing
• Business Growth
• Lead Generation
• Inbound marketing
• Distribution development

Want to work with me? Shoot me an email at andrei@getleado.com.

Biosphere Corporation

In 2012 I became a national key account manager and was responsible for increasing sales and customer growth.

Key Account Manager (National Chains)

Via GmbH

I became a marketing director of VIA GmbH company and was responsible for account-based marketing and acquiring big distributors and the biggest supermarket chains of Ukraine. As well, I was responsible for helping European manufacturers to enter the Ukrainian market and increase sales there.

Marketing Director

Kimberly-Clark

I’ve started my marketing career in 2006 as a sales rep at Kimberly Clark Corporation. I was promoted to area sales manager, regional sales manager, and regional trade marketing coordinator and then switched to marketing in 2011

Area Sales Manager and trade marketing coordinator

Co-founder @Fullfunnel.io| ABM & full-funnel marketing for B2B tech companies with high ACV and long sales cycle

We transform B2B Tech and Service-based companies from siloed sales and marketing to full-funnel account-based marketing and demand generation. 

We help your team develop an ABM strategy, launch pilot programs, operationalize and scale the programs without ramping up budget or depending on external agencies.

Here is how.

1. ABM STRATEGY.

We go together through a 3-week initial strategy sprint that includes: 

- Deep assessment of current marketing and sales processes
- Challenges both teams face and the root reasons behind them
- Revenue and channel analysis to identify focus markets and ICP for the ABM campaigns
- Custom ABM strategy development including detailed:
- Marketing and sales alignment with ICP, strategy and playbooks

2. LAUNCH PILOT ABM PROGRAM.

Within a single quarter, we’ll work with a pilot team to implement a minimal viable full-funnel program, without pausing existing processes. The pilot team usually consists of one marketer and one sales development rep.  

When we hit the target KPIs, we move to the operationalization and scaling stage.

3.DEVELOPING FULL-FUNNEL ABM FUNCTION.

At this stage we combine ABM with demand generation function to create a holistic model that creates awareness, generates demand and activates accounts that are already engaged across the full funnel.

SPRINTS INCLUDE:

-> Account-Based Marketing

-> LinkedIn demand generation and social selling

-> GTM strategy

-> Sales enablement

-> Demand generation and accounts warm-up

Why Work With FullFunnel.io?

1. 30+ years of niche experience

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge.

2. Knowledge transfer.

Your team gets consistent support and training, including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack, and process maps.

3. Revenue alignment.

We align marketing and sales teams around revenue, ideal customer profile, target accounts and lead scoring criteria which helps to consistently hit your revenue quota and operate as one Revenue Operations team.

OUR CASE STUDIES INCLUDE

- $300k from a pilot ABM campaign with a software development company

- 9 qualified sales opportunities and 3 new contracts, 10x ACV from an account-based demand generation campaign with AdTech development company

- 7 sales-qualified opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign in the Nordics region with a cloud solutions vendor

- 76% response rate, 36% accounts engaged, 5 opportunities from a pilot ABM campaign

At Fullfunnel.io we are growing B2B companies with long and complex sales cycles since 2006.

We were and still are “in trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, and bring to the table our 30+ years of combined experience and knowledge. 

I live and breathe B2B marketing since 2006. 

Before launching Fullfunnel.io, I spent 8 years in the enterprise segment working for Kimberly Clark and Biosphere Corporation.

What makes Fullfunnel.io different?

1. Ins and outs of selling to enterprise

Coming from the mid-market and enterprise world, I know all the ins and outs of selling to these segments: the research and evaluation processes, decision-making procedures inside the buying committee and the approval workflows. 

We’ve been there, done that, and know how to generate opportunities with these segments and influence the decision-making processes.

2. Niche experience

While we could help many B2B business, since 2007 we focus exclusively on two verticals: high-value B2B tech (enterprise SaaS, blockchain technology, hardware) and service-based companies (software development, consulting, cybersecurity, DevOps as a service, etc). 

We were and still are “in the trenches”, know the lowdown of these businesses, so you’ll get access to 30+ years of our combined experience and knowledge. 

3. Knowledge transfer and in-house operations

We believe that the real growth can only be driven in-house. You need to have people who are in the trenches every day, talking to customers, experiencing the sales hurdles, refining the messages and positioning.

We join your team as external marketing advisors, provide consistent support and training including step-by-step playbooks, templates, marketing and sales dashboards, tech stack and process maps.

As a result, you get an evergreen in-house growth engine.

B2B marketing plans often fail because of one reason: 
Lack of clarity.


Bad plans include vague activities that are usually misunderstood by leadership and sales.

Brand awareness is not about running ads for ungated content.

ABM is not about making a wish list of accounts, running display ads and automated emails.

Lead nurturing is not about setting up an automated sequence of emails to push the discovery call.

But yet most plans just mention these programs without any clarification.

If sales and leadership don't support these plans, it's not because they don't get marketing.

It's because they:

-Don't see the impact of these programs on the bottom line
-Don't expect it to be a cross-functional motion and expect marketing to run everything without sales involvement.

Good marketing plans are:

1. BALANCED.

-80%: always-on programs that work historically
-10%: short-term cross-functional campaigns co-created with sales
-10%: experiments

2. DETAILED AND FOCUSED

All programs have clear:

-Detailed timeline
-Goals and expectations
-Success and failure criteria
-Resources involvement
-Leading and lagging indicators to track program efficiency
-Forecast
-Weekly planning and review meetings (see an example: https://lnkd.in/dN_hMyfQ)
-Campaign visual outline (or deck) to show how it impacts the pipeline and revenue

Our template: https://lnkd.in/dSmufFht

3. INTERCONNECTED AND CROSS-FUNCTIONAL.

Every program impacts another, avoiding siloed execution.

Thought leadership ads to strategic accounts generate 1st-party engagement signals sales use for further engagement.

Webinars are tailored to a specific use case, buyer persona, and subset of accounts. They repurpose thought leadership content, and are repurposed later as market research.

4. INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE BUYER JOURNEY.

Marketing plans shouldn't be "brand awareness vs demand capture", "new pipeline vs expansion". 

If you focus on brand only, your sales process will struggle. We saw several MarTech companies generating buzz around them but struggling to convert brand into demand.

If you focus on demand capture, you'll miss the majority of the market.

Good marketing plans generate revenue while creating future pipeline, growing share of wallet, and preventing churn.

5. BACKED BY DATA.

Marketing plans based on gut feelings or broad data always fail.

Plans that include revenue trends and sales pipeline velocity across markets, segments, use cases (clusters) help to make smart bets.
---
This Wednesday, we've invited to Full-Funnel Live the head of marketing at Aligned, Ashley Lewin, to share her approach to marketing planning with GTM focus cycles.

Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/dCS6t6MK

Here is our buyer enablement cheat sheet:
https://lnkd.in/dVhSwK5i

GUIDES

-Account-based content: How to influence accounts at different stages of their buyer journey
-Buyer Enablement: How to help your B2B buyers to BUY from you
-How to match touchpoints with different buyer journey stages and use personalization to nurture target accounts
-How to Use a Mutual Action Plan
-How to Write, Think, and Talk like an Executive (to Get Big Deals Done)

TEMPLATES

-Business case template (feat. Nate Nasralla)
-Mutual action plan (feat. Gal Aga)

STACK

- Aligned: digital rooms & content hubs: https://lnkd.in/d9g84yq9
- Granola: AI-notetaking and summaries of the calls without joining the calls
- Claude: Extracting customer quotes and anecdotes about the challenges, goals and needs

Let me know which resource was the most helpful and which one you'd like us to add.

AI agents are the new Tamagotchi of 2025. Everybody talks about it. Some cool kids show sophisticated dashboards. And rarely a B2B enterprise organization really adopt it.

We've interviewed 46 enterprise B2B marketing leaders about how they use AI (swipe the deck), and what challenges they face. And, boy, it seems that all that glitters is not gold.

Here is the reality of adopting AI outside the LinkedIn bubble, with quotes from CMOs.

1. LACK OF AI STRATEGY.

There's pressure to bolt on AI everywhere, but often no clarity on why or what success looks like. Without that, AI risks becoming a shiny toy that creates more noise than results. But AI is only effective when plugged into a clear revenue strategy - otherwise it just fuels the hamster wheel, and you end up flaunting the toy for the sake of not being accused of lagging behind your peers.

2. EXPECTATION GAPS.

C-suite often hears 'AI' and assumes instant results/lower costs, but in reality, it still requires quality data, strategic direction, and human judgment. 

3. DATA QUALITY & CRM READINESS.

Hands down, data readiness. We've got a messy CRM. This includes weak labeling of wins, losses, and revenue. We've also got too many disconnected systems. It's a challenge getting info pulled into our MAP and CRM.

4. SILOED IMPLEMENTATION.

Beyond technical and security limitations that restrict integrations and data flow, the bigger challenge I've seen is the siloed approach to AI. Different teams are running their own AI initiatives without connecting them across the full funnel — marketing, SDRs, sales, and post-sales. Instead of improving alignment, we risk creating more disconnect, with teams moving at different speeds and on disconnected systems."

5. QUALITY CONTROL & REVIEWS.

AI has made it easier to produce content, but that just shifts the pressure to senior reviewers - myself included.  Reviewing the output takes twice as long. Ultimately, I still don't think what LLMs are producing is good enough in terms of tone of voice, angle, and approach.

6. TRUST & ACCURACY.

The biggest challenge with AI is trust. It is hard to trust how secure it is, but I have also found in many scenarios that incorrect information finds its way into the responses.

7. LEARNING CURVE & INTEGRATION.

The biggest challenge is learning tools, integrating them into workflows, and choosing what's worth our time to implement with so many tools and resources available. All while pipeline and revenue targets remain unchanged. 

TLDR;

Before you'll buy in the next shiny AI object, think about these challenges, and look at real examples of how AI is used.

Big thanks to everybody who contributed to the research:

Sam, ♜ Arthur, Elena, Hanna, Briana, 🌱 Allison, Aurelien, Giorgia, Samantha, Mindy, Sara, Stuart, 👨🏻‍💻 Dipak, Jamie, Rafael, Amelia, Holly, Holly, Kathleen, Justin, Nick, Connie, Jonathan, Tim, Tarek, Sophie, Kayleigh, Sheri, Nicole and many more whom I can't tag due to the limit of characters :)

46 AI practices in enterprise B2B marketing

I was genuinely interested to discover the root reasons why marketing faces pushback from sales, and interviewed 20+ Enterprise AEs, SDRs and VPs of sales. Here are 5 reasons they've shared:

1. THE PROTECTIVE MINDSET.

You know the story. You ask to interview a strategic account for a case study. Sales immediately says: "No, these are my contacts. We don't need to bother them."

The root cause is usually the "credit issue" - sales wants to prove they're the irreplaceable relationship owner, that deals happen purely because of them.

This is a part of a way bigger problem, where you have two choices: immediately trigger the change management and conversations with your leadership or find a new job.

2. THE DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE GAP.

One team I worked with had a marketer creating programs for technical buyers (software engineers) without any technical background. The content and messaging completely missed the mark.

You can’t gain the sales trust until you fix the domain knowledge gap and start involving (or working closely) with subject-matter experts. Here is an example: https://lnkd.in/dsUf7RFM

3. MISUNDERSTANDING SALES CHALLENGES.

You present a solution to sales that solves a problem you think they have. They push back. Why? Because you never actually asked what their real priorities and challenges are.

If you don't understand their day-to-day reality, you're solving imaginary problems.

Ashley Lewin shared her case last week: https://lnkd.in/dSQ4eT_d

When she started at Aligned, she heard a recurring complaint: the lead handoff process between marketing and sales was broken. She sat down with a sales leader, defined how the broken handoff process impacts revenue, and co-created a simple battle plan.

This approach immediately demonstrated marketing’s commitment to solving sales problems, and building the necessary relationship to run bigger initiatives together.

4. DIFFERENT INCENTIVES.

Sales is measured on revenue. Marketing is often measured on... MQLs? Traffic? Brand awareness metrics that don't connect to revenue?

I've heard multiple times about this case: Marketing comes to the board meeting celebrating improved traffic, better LLM visibility, hitting MQL targets. Meanwhile, sales is missing revenue targets.

From the sales perspective: "These guys are getting celebrated while we're drowning. And now they want to tell us what to do?"

5. NAIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT.

You create a playbook and tell sales: "This is what you should do." You expect them to follow it.

People don't change just because you ask them to. Change requires understanding their motivations, addressing their concerns, showing early wins, and getting their buy-in during the creation process - not after.
---
The good news?

There are quick tactical fixes to go from misaligned, siloed functions to revenue teams. Read tomorrow on our Substack: https://lnkd.in/dSje9cKc

What does marketing own in ABM?
Spoiler: it's not air cover + personalized landing pages.

In low ACV and short transactional sales, marketing runs the conventional ABM playbook: 

- tracks the search intent
- ad clicks
- alerts sales on the account engagement

and doesn't help with further account development because it's often enough. 

But in an enterprise environment with 12-18 month sales cycles and more than 250+ nurturing touchpoints required to generate a discovery call, it simply doesn't move the needle. Not to say that sales disengagement happens really fast because of lack of a meaningful progress.

In ABM programs that performed really well (see Customs4Trade: https://lnkd.in/dKVE2bnF, CrossKnowledge: https://lnkd.in/dBKymbaT , Benchprep: https://lnkd.in/d-rSjKeT), marketing was actively involved in the execution.

Here are 5 areas that marketing owns in ABM to make it work:

1.ACCOUNT-BASED CONTENT.

Not your blog articles or PDFs, but the content that is optimized for a specific:

-Use case (1:many)
-Buyer persona (1:few)
-Buying committee of a specific account (1:1)

2.RELEVANT ACCOUNT SIGNALS, ENGAGEMENT AND INTENT DATA.

Often, besides the obvious signals (money raised, new executive hired), neither marketing nor sales holistically track all the engagement with their strategic accounts. 

But fixing account blindness and making a cohesive overview of all engagement touchpoints helps:

a) to prioritize all accounts
b) plan the next meaningful steps besides the standard outreach email

3.MEASURING AND REPORTING.

In long sales cycles, you can't measure your program efficiency just by revenue because of the revenue delay. 

You need to have a simple but holistic dashboard that presents weekly progress:

-Account velocity 
-Leading indicators
-Lagging indicators
-Discovery calls, pipeline, revenue

4.DOCUMENTATION.

Often, the early success of an ABM program can't be replicated because of:

- Lack of structured and documented playbooks aligned with a specific timeline
- Internal examples and benchmarks (how the "good" looks like)
- Planning principles (account qualification, prioritization, reseach, etc)

To scale ABM and avoid it being another random act of marketing, marketing needs to work on documentation from Day 1.

5.ENGAGE THE ACCOUNT ECOSYSTEM FOR AWARENESS AND NURTURING.

While sales owns buying committee engagement, in our best ABM programs, marketing team engaged with:

- Marketing peers from the target accounts
- Industry media and thought leaders the buyers are following
- Communities where the buyer personas are consuming content
---
There are 2 more areas we are going to share and present practical examples with Vladimir Blagojević this Wed, 9.30am EST - 3.30pm CET. 

Save your spot here: https://lnkd.in/d6eKARvH

We don't create awareness through ads and outreach. We create awareness through marketing & sales playbooks and ecosystem:

MARKETING AND SALES PLAYBOOKS

1. Thought leadership.

- Guides, case studies, best practices shared by leadership and sales
- Thought leadership ads targeting strategic accounts
- Detailed case studies

2. Social engagement with the target buyers.

- Peers connections 
- Commenting
- Content distribution

3. Content collaboration.

Co-creation with the strategic buyers:

- Market research
- Best practices / trends
- Roundtables
- Interviews 

4. Events.

Value-added, educational events designed for strategic buyer personas about specific use cases or challenges:

- Webinars
- Summits
- Workshops

ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystem = channels where target buyers look for content or engage with their peers. Marketing owns awareness creation in 4 major areas:

1. Communities and associations:

- Involving SMEs into valuable threads
- Co-creation with community admins and members 
- Sponsored value-added events, not a product pitching

2. Industry PR.

- Constant engagement with industry podcasters to get opportunities for the leadership to be a guest

- Guest posts in industry media: blogs and newsletters 

- Content promotion through sponsorships

3. Engagement with industry thought leaders and analysts.

- Value-added commenting 
- Video and audio interviews / quotes
- Sponsored thought leadership: best practices mentioning your product

4. Partners.

- Joint events and promotion
- Constant engagement
- Content co-creation and distribution
---
My biggest bet: only the companies that know how to engage their buyers will win. 

Not through ads or personalized outreach, but through meaningful connections, value-added nurturing, constant engagement, and influence through the ecosystem.

Sales often complain about lack of awareness among strategic accounts. Here is how marketing can help (our example):

While writing our first book about Full-Funnel Marketing, we saw B2B marketing leaders under pressure to deploy AI and deliver more without any strategy. We decided to uncover the challenges and best practices.

THE MARKETING & SALES PLAYBOOK

We interviewed VPs of marketing at B2B SaaS companies about how they use AI and the challenges they face. The goal was to uncover best practices while building relationships.

THE ECOSYSTEM PLAYBOOK

We invited industry thought leaders to participate. Knowing our target buyers are Pavilion community members, and they trust Pavilion research, we reached out to Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing at Pavilion. 

We created a comprehensive research featuring VPs of marketing and thought leaders, plus multiple assets:

- A report: "How B2B Leaders Deploy AI to Scale Revenue" feat. Kathleen, Jon Miller, Jonathan Bland, Sam Kuehnle, Sara Stella Lattanzio and others: https://lnkd.in/d549sMYB

- "How AI is used in enterprise B2B SaaS: 46 CMOs best practices": https://lnkd.in/dEJ-Dguj

- Newsletter breaking down best practices in detail: https://lnkd.in/dq6QMTzY 

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT 

Participants engaged back by commenting, sharing these assets from their profiles and with colleagues—giving us exposure among strategic buyers through dark social.

MARKETING-TO-MARKETING ENGAGEMENT

We reached out to marketing counterparts at featured companies: "Hey, we featured your VP of marketing in our AI research. Thought you might enjoy it. We can do co-promotion, or here's a quote you can share on your LinkedIn page."

RESULTS:

- Created awareness through peers and thought leaders, not vendor messaging
- Generated 1,100 webinar signups for "How to survive as B2B CMO in AI era"
- Built relationships with marketing teams of our ICP accounts

The Bottom Line: 

Don't just hand sales a playbook to engage accounts. But actively help create awareness through the buyer ecosystem. Sales teams love it—I've never heard negative feedback about helping create awareness or getting inside accounts.
---
We as marketers often lean toward passive brand awareness through ads, SEO, and blog content, assuming target accounts will notice and engage. 

The problem is competition, where budgets win. If we're not HubSpot or Salesforce, we need proactive playbooks alongside conventional programs.

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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);}Andrei Zinkevich's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAndrei Zinkevich's LinkedIn Performance